The Loveless
by Lt. Commander Richie
Summary: Follow the story of a girl named Chyrin Renton, as she's thrust from her world to the world of Final Fantasy 7. Watch her struggles as she tries to adapt... And her attempts to find out just who it was that brought her here and for what reason.
1. So It Begins

**The Loveless**

_©®™ Lt. Commander Richie_

**A/N: **_Welcome, one and all, to my newest project. Its name is The Loveless, quite obviously, and to be rather frank it is a blatant self-insert. I'm trying to make a believable Mary Sue here, people. It won't have any pairings involving the OC, either! This is a first for me! Anyone in for the long run? Someday this'll be great. I just know it'll be longer than Penance, you'll see!  
_

**Disclaimer: **_Summons are red, Jenova is blue. I don't own, so please don't sue!_

_Chapter 1_

* * *

The sun shone brightly off the ocean as a small white car sped along the shore, scrubgrass swaying in the salty wind as they passed. The top of the car wasn't down, but it was still cold inside to both of the riders. The road was a large one, many smaller ones leading off in three-way intersections dispersed with small back-roads dotted with State Beach signs. The car passed through one of the larger intersections without too much trouble, and one of the riders looked up slightly before looking back down.

"You just missed the turn." The girl was wearing a long silver wig and a blindfold pushed to her forehead, crammed in the passenger seat of the small and cramped car with a well-worn rented DVD in her lap and her eyes glued to the screen of her PSP. Small Paopou Fruit keychains with a mass of ribbons on them jingled on the keychain loop of the game system, mixing with the sound of constantly-mashed buttons and making a thoroughly annoying sound.

"We're returning the DVD first." The woman driving was much too young-looking for her age. Except for a few wrinkles and the large white streak in her curvy shoulder-length black hair, she didn't look a day over thirty-something. A large floppy pink hat, its brim smashed against the roof of the car and the headrest of the driver's seat, was shoved over the white streak in the woman's hair. The girl sighed, pausing her game and looking up at the driver.

"But _muth-urrr_..." She trailed off, making a pouty face and utterly failing.

"I'm sure all your obsessed friends will understand that we have to go return a movie first." The two sat in silence for a moment, the red light they were stopped at turning green and the tiny white rag-top Jaguar they were both crammed into speeding across the deserted intersection.

"But I don't _want _to return it. Emmie doesn't have a copy and we were gonna watch it tonight!" the girl in the silver wig sat her PSP on her lap, a blue _Pause _layered over a darkened screen. She tucked the long silver bangs of her wig behind her ears, pushing up her slowly-falling black blindfold.

"Chyrin, honey, sometimes you just have to suck it up and let things happen." The car turned sharply around a corner, then again as it went into the parking lot of the closed video store. Chyrin sighed and turned off her PSP, shoving it in the pocket of her pants and unbuckling. She got out of the car and pulled her blindfold over her eyes for the hell of it, brushing the long bangs of her wig out of the way and headed for the video return slot.

"_'Just suck it up and let things happen'_," The teen mocked, her lip curling up into a sneer. "_Please_. She wouldn't understand if understanding came up and bit her on the arse." The wig-wearing girl tried pushing the case in, but the door wouldn't budge. She tried again, still to no avail. Muttering in an annoyed fashion, she shoved the worn DVD case into the slot, her hand going all the way in past the metal flap. She let go of the case and pulled her hand back, but the flap closed on her wrist and tried to lock.

It was an old thing, partially rusted shut from the salty air of the seaside town. Chyrin had gotten her hand stuck in it before, and since then usually went inside to return videos. But she was in a hurry and the place wasn't open, so she had foregone her hatred of the rusty metal door and just tried shoving the DVD inside. The teen pulled at her wrist, but a jagged pain shot up her arm and she stopped. Growling slightly, she shoved at the door and tried to pull her arm out. The same pain hit her, and she whimpered this time.

"Mom?" She called, turning around and waving to her mother. "My hand's stuck." her mother rolled her eyes and turned off the car, pulling out the keys and getting out. Her long white hospital labcoat blew around in the wind, and she nearly lost her ID badge and her floppy pink hat in the process.

"Honestly, Chyrin." The woman said in a disapproving tone, her heels making clicking sounds as she walked over and kneeled down next to her daughter. "I thought you learned after the last time." The older woman pushed on the door and Chyrin pulled, but she hissed in pain and stopped.

"It's not moving and my wrist hurts!" The teen in the wig pushed her blindfold up with her free hand, the world gaining more color than the hazy black it had been before. Her mother leaned back to survey the rusted door, raising an eyebrow at the old contraption.

"Push your arm farther in. I'll hook my fingers under the door and push it up and in, and you should be able to get your hand out." She finally said, glaring when her daughter just barely rolled her eyes and sighed. "Don't you roll your eyes at me, just do it." Chyrin grumbled, but pushed her arm farther into the slot. The rusty door ground open, suddenly popping open and making the teen shove her entire arm down the chute. Grumbling, she pulled her arm back out and her mother put her hand in so as to keep it from closing and locking again.

"See? That wasn't so bad, now was it?" Her mother asked, and the wig-wearing teen sighed.

"Fine, it wasn't. Thanks for getting my hand out." The two stood, both of them smiling. The older woman pulled her daughter into a hug, and the teen groaned.

"Moth-_errr_, do you really have to hug me in public?" They both rolled their eyes, but released eachother and stepped back. The older woman paused, however, her smile faltering.

"Honey... Don't move. Something's not right." Her mother looked panicked all of a sudden, and on instinct Chyrin took a deep breath. The air no longer smelled like salt, and instead of the brightness of a sunny and small seaside town in summer the light was filtered and gray, tinting everything a muted color of what it once was. The teen blinked several times, slowly turning to look out at where the ragtop Jaguar should have been. But instead of the parking lot of the closed video store, there was a busy street full of both people and older-model-looking cars. All the buildings were cement, and rising above the bustling and dirty-looking city were girders stretching up to the sky and a hazy-looking old towering building that all looked so _very _familiar that it made Chyrin want to scream and huddle on the ground.

"Chyrin? You don't look so good." Her mother held the back of her hand to the teen's forehead, and the girl snapped out of her sudden zoning. "Wherever we are, we should find out just how the hell we got here."

"Mom?" Chyrin asked, pulling the blindfold completely off her head and stuffing it in her pocket with her PSP and her wallet.

"... Hm?" The doctor asked, her pacing making rather annoying clip-clop sounds on the hard concrete sidewalk. Several people bumped into both of them, none of them really paying any attention to either.

"We're not in Kansas anymore." It hit the teen so fast that she nearly didn't know what to do with the thought. But she still grabbed a handful of her silver wig and tugged. Pain shot across her scalp, and she yelped.

"What're you doing?" Her mother asked, watching as the teen tugged at her hair even more, then ran a hand through her bangs and promptly screamed.

"My wig's not a wig! It's my hair!"

* * *

Catherine Renton was abso-fuckin'-loutely scared out of her goddamn mind. She had no clue where the hell she and her daughter were, they were stranded wherever the hell _here _was, and to top it all off Chyrin was probably having a mental breakdown. But she kept her calm facade, if not for herself then for her daughter. She watched as Chyrin began pacing back and forth, gathering up all her now-silver hair that had at one point been a wig in one hand and sweeping her bangs back with the other.

"Ma, I need your hat." Catherine handed the hat over, and the teen shoved it over her now-silver hair. Looking a bit funny with the large and floppy pink hat jammed onto her head, Chyrin spun around several times. "Can you see my hair?"

"Nope." The doctor was completely in the dark, and even moreso when her daughter jumped up real close to her and held one eye open.

"Are my eyes still brown?" Catherine nodded, still extremely confused. The teen sighed almost forlornly, but backed away and then leaned against the wall.

"Chyrin, what's all this about?" Chyrin looked up, raising an eyebrow that was brown and shot-through with silver, and shrugged.

"I'onno. It's all your fault, though. I figure as soon as this all sinks in, I'll be running into walls and screaming like a loon." A man shoved Catherine aside, walking on without so much as an apology. The doctor stumbled in her heels, bracing herself against the wall next to her daughter so as to keep herself from doing a faceplant.

"Hey bastard, watch where you're going!" The woman yelled, shaking a fist. The man didn't listen, and continued to walk on.

"If we'd just gone to Emmie's instead of returning the freakin' DVD, we wouldn't be stuck here." Chyrin griped, crossing her arms and sliding down to sit on the dirty sidewalk. She looked up towards the sky, her eyes falling on the looming and nearly-destroyed monolith that she figured she knew so well.

"Where _is _here?" Catherine sat down next to her teenage daughter, looking in the same direction she was.

"City called Edge." The girl supplied. "Way over there is Midgar, and in the very center of that city is the old ShinRa building." Chyrin pointed at the monolithic structure rising out of the smog, her voice bored. "North of here, across the plains, is a little city called Kalm, south-west of here is Junon, south of that is Fort Condor, the Mithril Mines, and on the other side of the mountains is the Chocobo Farm."

"What's a Chocobo?" The doctor asked, almost dreading the answer as she looked over at her daughter.

"Think of a draft horse, then turn it into a giant chicken." She was right to dread it. In one final gasp of breath, Catherine fainted. Chyrin put her head in her hands and moaned.

* * *

**So... Did you survive? Don't worry, it'll just get odder. And possibly worse. In fact, definitely worse. It's written through chapter nine right now, so that means you have nine weeks of updates from this _at least_. The best part is that I finally have a menagerie I can work out of, and it comes equipped with a list of Materia (besides the ones I remember and/or have from FFVII)! So plenty of monsters this story around, not just Mandragoras and Dragons! Now I have Razor Weeds and Sahagains, not to mention Behemoths, Mover RE's and Sweepers.  
**

**But yeah.** **Before you start on me, it's post-DoC. You'll see why eventually. It'll also have a _lot_ to do with Crisis Core, what since I love that game to little bits and pieces despite the fact that I have to kill Angeal... Again... If I want to advance and finish the game for what seems to be the bajillionth time. One of these days I'll try playing it on Hard Mode!**

**A few things are confusing me about the layout of the Slums, though. Sector Five is where Aerith's church is, and somehow Sector Six gets lost between there and Sector Seven? The park right next to the gate to Sector Seven is in Sector Six, right? So's the Marketplace. But in Crisis Core they're both in Sector Five and then Sector Seven is _right there_. I'm having a slight mental crisis. Anybody wanna help me figure it out?**

**So yeah. Rejoice. I've started a new multi-chapter fic. It'll be an epic. You'll see. Lots of fun and emotional breakdowns.**


	2. Sweeper!

**The Loveless**

_©®™ Lt. Commander Richie_

**Disclaimer: **_I feel discouraged! Should I change my summary to make this sound more interesting than it actually is?_

_Chapter 2_

* * *

"For an old lady..." Chyrin trailed off, hefting her mother higher onto her shoulder and trying to walk at the same time. "You're really... Frickin' heavy!" The teen rounded a corner, finally greeted with a sight she really wanted to see. Since she had no Gil, and this was somewhere you definitely needed it, she had drug her mother all the way across freakin' Edge and into the ruins of Midgar, across freakin' Midgar and to what was left of Sector Five, and across the debris scattered around the Sector Five Slums to the only standing building, the church. Thankfully, they hadn't come across any monsters. But that would probably change real quick if they didn't get inside that church.

"Ironic." The overburdened teen muttered, pushing one of the heavy doors open with one hand and holding her mother up with the other. The girl hated churches with a passion, and now she was taking refuge in one or else she would be sleeping outside on the streets. It was so terrible that it was almost funny. The church was deserted, the pool of water where there had once been a large patch of flowers completely still and reflecting what little light there was from the overcast day. Chyrin laid her mother down on one of the pews, pulling off the obnoxious pink hat and tossing it aside. She walked forward, looking around at the stone walls and the once-proud wall hangings, and finally sat down at the edge of the pool and looked up into the smoggy sky.

"What did I do to deserve this?" The teen asked, pulling her red doodled-on Crocs off her feet and setting them on the ground before dipping her toes into the water. Her silver hair fell around her face as she leaned forward to look at her reflection, and she made a face when she finally saw it. She stuck her tongue out at the rippling water, her fingers tightening around clumps of grass and throwing them as far as she could into the pool. The water splashed upwards, droplets falling every which way and making ripples flow outwards in every direction.

"_Ripples form on the water's surface..._" Chyrin muttered wistfully, before making a face and sticking her tongue out. "Geez, I'm going so nuts that I sound like Genesis-freakin'-Rhapsodos." She kicked the water one more time, before drawing her knees up to her chest and resting her forehead on them. The teen sighed, pulling her blindfold from where she had stashed it in her pocket and tying it around her head. She pulled her bangs out from underneath it, and closed her eyes under it.

* * *

"Hey, lady?" Chyrin jolted awake when several small hands began pulling at her hair, and she flailed and nearly fell into the pool in front of her. Three little kids, probably around six-or-so years old, were all standing around the teen. She got to her feet, sliding her shoes on and brushing hair from her eyes so as to better see through the transparent blindfold over her eyes. The light overhead was brighter than it had been before she had gone to sleep, so it was probably a new day.

"... What?" The teen asked, confused. One little girl reached up and grabbed a fistful of the older girl's long silver hair, twisting it so that it reflected the light.

"You have pretty hair." Chyrin snatched her hair away, muttering something about hoodlums.

"Thanks, but why're you kids here anyway? Shouldn't you go home? Do your parents usually let you run around in what's left of Sector Five?" She asked, and the two girls and one boy looked a little sheepish.

"We're s'posed to be in school, but nobody goes anyway." The little boy said, and both of the girls hit him in the arms they were closest to. He whined loudly, unsure of which arm to protect first.

"I don't like it either, but ya gotta go anyway." Chyrin chided, shaking a finger at the three of them. All three kids whined loudly, crossing arms and glaring at the older girl. Silver hair glinting, the girl cocked her head to one side and raised a completely silver eyebrow at them. "You're not getting anywhere with those-" The kids began making rather pitiful faces, and the teen sighed.

"We'll watch the sleeping lady for you if you don't tell anyone that we're not in school!" One of the girls said, and the other two kids shot her withering glares.

"You're grasping at straws, kid." Chyrin said, disbelieving. Sharing looks, the three little kids sank to their knees and shook folded hands at her.

"Pleeeease?" The teen looked down at them all incredulously, pushing up her blindfold so as to get an unhindered view. She sighed, and the little boy in the middle smiled. The two girls whacked him again, and they nodded in understanding.

"Fine. Watch my mom while I go find some Gil to get some food." With a swish of her long hair, Chyrin had jumped over the three and was running for the door. She paused there, turning around and saluting to the kids. "If she wakes up, explain Chocobo racing to her. That'll probably knock her out again!" With a grin the teen ran out into the sunshine, all smiles as she looked around at the wreckage of the Slums around her. Her grin faded, however, as she began picking her way towards the old Sector Five gate. With a groan, the girl kicked at an old girder.

"Gods, this sucks. Emmie's probably wondering where the hell I am, too! I can't go to see Death Note with all the Kingdom Hearts cosplayers!" The teen yelled, kicking the girder again and again and watching as her rubber Croc made her foot bounce back like a superball every time. "For the love of goddamn-fuckin' _Minerva_!" Chyrin lifted up her foot and stomped on the girder, making it jump slightly on a pivot point before falling back down with a mighty clang. The teenager sunk to the ground, gathering up her knees and burying her face into them. "It's not fair!" She yelled, her voice muffled by her legs. "It's just not fair!"

She sat there for a while, occasionally beating her fist against the girder she had been kicking. Her wrist that she had gotten caught in the video box was an angry red, and a jagged scrape was all across the top of it. Every time she banged her fist, the scab cracked a little more. Finally it began to bleed, a small trickle of blood tracing from the center of the scrape to the side of her wrist and dripping to the ground. It hadn't bled before, but Chyrin was beyond caring. She just wanted to go _home_. The blood continued to drip from the teen's scrape, and she fixed it with a nasty glare.

"I certainly hope they've invented hyposprays by now, because I really don't want a needle for a Tetanus shot." She muttered to herself, pulling her blindfold off her head and untying the knot with one hand before wrapping it around her wrist with a hiss of pain and tying a knot. It looked a bit deformed, but it would suffice until she could get proper medical attention or someone to use Cure on her. The junk pile the teen was sitting against began to rumble, and with a screech the girl jumped to her feet and ran a short distance away. All of the rubble and scrap began to vibrate, finally falling away with a few shakes of the massive orange machine's large guns. A red diamond with white and yellow on the inside was emblazoned on both guns, and Chyrin's eyes went wide as it slowly began turning towards her on its large triangular feet.

"Sweeper!" The teen screamed, and high-tailed it down the swathe cut between piles of rubble towards the Sector Five gate and away from the ShinRa death machine. "Shitshitshitshitshitshit..." Several bullets pinged off the twisted metal around her, and she dove behind a rather large pile so as to shield herself. There it was! The gate! Just a few hundred feet to it! Sweepers didn't move too fast, she could get over there and out of the Slums in a heartbeat before it even got to her. Driven by fear, Chyrin bolted for the gate out of the Slums and into Edge like Odin was on her heels. Bullets whizzed around her, and at the last second the girl flung herself around the corner and out the gate. But she didn't stop there. Silver hair flying everywhere, she continued running down the street like a madwoman. Several people yelled as she pushed them aside and ran, latching her good hand around a signpost and throwing herself around a corner and nearly straight into oncoming traffic. Backing up and slumping against a public mailbox, Chyrin cradled her scraped hand against her chest. Blood was seeping out of her tied blindfold-bandage, and that was a bad thing. It was bleeding badly, but it shouldn't have been. It didn't even bleed when she first got it! It was just a scrape!

"You alright?" A woman in various shades of gray leaned down over her, light brown hair falling to one side as she tilted her head to the side to get a better view of the bleeding appendage. Her shirt was the only part of her with any sort of color, a beacon of theater in a monochromatic town with _LOVELESS_ in bright teal on a black background.

"I'm fine. Really!" The woman fixed the teen with an incredulous look, raising an eyebrow before taking hold of her upper arm and hauling her to her feet. She began to inspect the nasty-looking cracked scab and torn skin, pushing away the impromptu bandage to get a better look.

"You're bleeding pretty bad, you know. Hospital's not too far, I can take you if you like." The woman said, concern in her eyes.

"It looks worse than it is, really. I can find the place myself." Chyrin insisted, but the woman re-tied the bandage and took her by her good wrist.

"Listen. I can help you. If you don't know how to get to the hospital, I'll take you." She began leading the teen across the street, weaving between slow-moving cars and parked motorcycles before continuing on down the crowded sidewalk.

"You don't have to, you can just give me directions!" Silver hair flew everywhere as the woman began running, crossing a deserted crosswalk just as the light at the intersection turned green. A very fast and sleek black motorcycle sped past not two feet behind the two, nearly smacking Chyrin in the back of the head with one of the exhaust pipes. They reached the other side without any incident, however, and the teen finally wrenched her wrist from the woman's grasp.

"'S the matter?" The brunette asked, raising an eyebrow at the silver-haired girl. "Don't you want to get that looked at?"

"Sure, but I don't know who the hell you are or why you're dragging me off!" The woman smacked herself in the forehead with the heel of her palm, groaning.

"How stupid of me! You're right not to trust me." She said, smiling widely and sticking out a hand to shake. "Name's Lamaida Randall."

* * *

**Anyone ever noticed how, if you re-arrange 'Nanaki', you get 'Anakin'? Yeah, try un-scrambling 'Lamaida' and see what you get.**

**Not just anyone will pick you up off the street and take you to the hospital... No, it takes a rather _special _kind of person. You'll see. Until next week then!**


	3. Excuse Me?

**The Loveless**

_©®™ Lt. Commander Richie_

**Disclaimer: **_Everything is copyrighted to someone else, except for Lamaida, Chyrin, Catherine and any number of random background characters._

_Chapter 3_

* * *

Dr. Cynthia Dornes carefully took in the girl sitting on the exam table from the hallway outside. The girl seemed like one of the run-of-the-mill old Slum rats, her white and yellow sleeveless jacket splotched with dirt and her own blood. Her pants had fared about the same, dusty patches decorating the dark blue fabric.

"Did she say what she got the scrape from?" The brunette doctor asked, pushing her circular glasses back up the bridge of her nose. "If she came from the Slums, it could be infected."

"No, she didn't. But it looked pretty bad. Can't you just seal it up?" The woman that had brought her in, Lamaida Randall, didn't look one bit like the girl in the room. In fact, she looked more like she had just grabbed the girl off the street. Knowing Lamaida, who had logged five other girls about the same age into the public hospital in the last month alone, that was _exactly _what had gone down.

"I can't, Lamaida. You know that. I'll see if it's infected, and then I'll go from there." Looking dejected, Lamaida pulled her knit hat from her pocket and shoved it back over her light brown hair. The woman slumped down into a chair across the hall, and Dr. Dornes smiled warmly.

"Just make sure she's alright." The doctor nodded, before turning and walking into the exam room. The girl looked up, blowing grayish-silver hair from her eyes in a sigh. She was slumped forward, her posture horrendous and her shoulders squared.

"Hi, my name's Dr. Cynthia Dornes. I'm going to be looking you over." The brunette introduced, holding out a hand. The teenaged girl glared, raising an eyebrow.

"Chyrin. This is a hospital, right? You've gotta have a Master Magic Materia somewhere, so just use Cure Three on my wrist and discharge me. If it's infected, give me a Remedy and I'll be on my way." Dr. Dornes looked affronted, her mouth falling slightly open at the forwardness of the girl. She was obviously trying to get out of the hospital... But why?

"We don't have a Master Magic because of budget cuts, actually, and a Remedy won't cure an infection." She finally said, and then closed the door to the examination room. "But I actually have to ask you something... Do you know why Lamaida brought you in?" Chyrin lowered her first eyebrow and raised the other, fixing the doctor with an incredulous look.

"... Because my wrist was bleeding everywhere and I'd just been chased from the Sector Five Slums by an old ShinRa Sweeper?" She finally asked, as though it was one of the most obvious things said all day. "Why, am I under arrest or something?"

"Oh! No, you're not under arrest." Smiling, Dr. Dornes pulled on a pair of latex gloves and picked up the teen's wrist. She carefully undid the knot in the makeshift black bandage the girl was wearing, and peeled it away from the scrape. The laceration was caked with dried blood, but a new scab was beginning to form. Pulling the black bandage all the way away, the doctor quickly walked over and put it in the sink and turned the water on over it. Wisps of steam rose from the sink, and the brunette doctor took a small washcloth and ran it under the scalding water.

"You said you had to ask me something." Chyrin said, hissing as the doctor turned and took her wrist, dabbing the blood away from the wound. It looked like it had stopped bleeding, but every time the skin was stretched it burned like all hell. "So spit it out."

"Well... Miss Randall has a history of bringing in down-on-their-luck girls for medical attention." Dr. Dornes began, putting down the bloodied washcloth and opening up a drawer in the side of the exam table and pulling out a bright green orb. "Esuna." She said, holding the Materia underneath Chyrin's scraped wrist. A green mist drifted up from the orb, passing through the silver-haired teen's wrist and bringing a blackened mist up with it. The teenager's eyes went wide as the pain in her wrist disappeared, and the mist dissipated.

"Aaaaand?" The girl prompted, unsure of whether or not she _actually _wanted to hear it.

"She thinks you're a prostitute with an abusive Pimp." In a single movement, Dr. Dornes rolled the Mastered Cure Materia across Chyrin's wrist and effectively turned the sticky-looking brand new scab into a long and brittle brown line with quite a bit of scar tissue underneath. The teen gasped at the slight pain, before gritting her teeth. "You're not, are you?"

Chyrin was silent for a moment, her lip curling into an angry sneer. She finally jumped down, shoving the brunette doctor out of the way and wrenching the door of the small exam room open so fast that it slammed against the wall and the handle made a dent in the plaster. She stomped across the hall and hauled back her good hand in a fist, and as Lamaida looked up she hauled off and punched her as hard as she could in the cheek. The woman let out a yell and fell out of the chair she had been sitting in, holding a hand to her bruising cheek and spitting out blood.

"You _bitch_!" Chyrin screamed, leaning over the woman and pointing down at her with a murderous look in her eyes. "You only fucking helped me because you think that I'm a goddamn fucking _prostitute_?"

"Chyrin!" Dr. Dornes screamed, shoving the Materia drawer of the exam table shut and running out into the hall. Lamaida struggled to her feet, wiping blood from the side of her mouth.

"It was an honest mistake..." The brunette promptly got another fist to the face, and she went down hard.

"You don't fucking _make _the mistake to _begin_ with! Who in their goddamn right-fuckin'-mind _assumes _that a random girl on the street is a fucking _prostitute_?" Cyrin stood over her with her fists at her sides, her lip curled in disgust.

"You sure do swear a lot when you're angry." Lamaida managed to get to her feet once more, and when Chyrin threw another punch the woman moved out of the way. Of course, that put her in line for the snap-kick to the head. Again she went down, and the teen pushed her way past Dr. Dornes to get to the sink in the exam room and pull out her blindfold.

"That was unacceptable! She was just trying to help you!" The brunette doctor wailed, frantically pushing the call button next to the door. Down the hall at the nurse's station, a very urgent siren was going off.

"She only helped 'cause she thought I was an abused prostitute!" Chyrin wrung out her blindfold as she walked, sneering once more at the woman knocked out on the floor. "She's paying both bills." With that, the teen took off at a run for the elevators at the end of the hall. Behind her, Dr. Dornes pushed the call button a final time before opening up the Materia drawer on the exam table and pulling out a few bright green orbs.

* * *

"_HolyshitIdidn'tjustdothat_." Chyrin ran around a corner and leaned against the alley wall, sinking to the ground and looking at the soggy blindfold she held clenched in both hands. She had just _snap-kicked _someone _in the head_! What if it did permanent damage? She might have been in a hospital, but what if it was like Aerith? What if Mastered Restore or Phoenix Downs or Safety Bits or Super Ribbons didn't work?

"Focus." The silver-haired girl commanded herself, holding the blindfold up to the light to see if she could still see through it. Light filtered through rather nicely, and she tied it around her head and double-knotted it. "Gotta get food, gotta get Gil, gotta get a weapon and take revenge on the Sweeper that got me into this mess."

"Hey, girlie." Chyrin screamed, jumping to her feet and running out of the alleyway that housed the creepy-looking guy that kinda looked like the Edge equivalent of a seedy old pedophile drug dealer. She ran a few streets, getting odd looks from the people around her as she navigated with the blindfold on. At one point she nearly got nailed in the middle of the street by an idiot on an old Hardy-Daytona motorcycle, resulting in plenty of screaming an cussing in the direction that the rider had gone off in. A good five or so city blocks away from the rather seedy alleyway, the teen stopped to take a breather. She leaned against a cement wall, taking her wallet from her pocket and snapping it open before flipping through the contents.

"Damn, it didn't automatically convert." The silver-haired girl muttered, seeing that her seventeen dollars and twenty-four cents hadn't been changed to the requisite amount of Gil. "Some Mary Sue I am." She snapped the wallet shut and shoved it back in her pants pocket, jumping forward and grabbing the shoulder of the first person she could.

"The hell do you want? I ain't givin' you no money." Just her luck, she'd managed to grab the shoulder of a crotchety-sounding older man with a large cigar jammed between his teeth and greasy black hair slicked back with what smelled like too much Pomade.

"Is there a pawnshop anywhere around here?" Chyrin asked, smiling nicely. The man frowned at her, but pointed down the street a ways.

"Closest one's in Little Wutai. Three blocks down, block'n'a'half over." The teen was about to thank him, but the older man shrugged her off and blended back into the crowd. She sighed, turning the way the man had told her and heading off down the street. With the foot traffic, it took her a while, but eventually the silver-haired girl made it the requisite three blocks. The man had been right, too. She couldn't miss Little Wutai. A big cement representation of the Pagoda was built in the middle of a large walkway, and on a big archway of the same medium as the rest of the city was a relief of the Da Chao. Under that was a metal signboard in Kanji, but Chyrin was at a loss as to what it said. She passed under the archway and looked around, and was nearly immediately grinning. The entirety of Little Wutai was lined with street vendors and restaurants, large fans and strings of paper cranes flowing from every awning. Tucked between two vendors with naught but a small wooden sign to show it was there, was a flight of stairs down into the basement of another shop. Chyrin looked around, and, seeing no other pawnshop, nearly dove down the stairs. A little old man was seated behind a counter, a Koto out in front of him that he was in the process of putting several new strings in.

"Wercome! Have a rook around, see what you rike, yes?" The old man's voice was heavily-accented, and the Silver-haired girl was having a few issues understanding him. She pulled her wallet from her pocket and dumped the contents into her hand, then stuffed them both back in the pocket. She approached the counter, pretending to look interested in the re-stringing of the beautifully-carved instrument. It wasn't until the very last string was replaced that the girl spoke.

"Do you deal in ancient currency?" Chyrin finally asked, looking up and raising an eyebrow. She pushed her blindfold to her forehead, her eyes all smiles as she did so. The old man put away his tools, carefully taking the repaired Koto and setting it against the back wall. He took a pair of old glasses from his shirt pocket, pushing them up onto the bridge of his nose.

"Ret me see?" He asked, and Chyrin reached into her pocket and withdrew her twenty-four cents. She set each penny, nickel and dime down in a straight line, and when she was finished she stood up straight and looks down at the little old man. The old Wutain man bent over the small change, taking each in his fingers and turning them over.

"Dug 'em up myself in Bone Village, and the foreman there said they're from Era 0001 984 at the earliest." She supplied, mentally crossing her fingers and hoping that the little old man bought it.

"Why you not take to museum?" The old man asked, pulling out several plastic bags and putting one coin in each.

"Museum didn't want 'em. Said that a kid like me couldn't get my hands on stuff like that, so they wouldn't even look." Chyrin tried not to look too particularly hopeful at the prospect of getting a huge amount of Gil for her loose change, but couldn't contain a smile.

"You smire too much. Rooks bery weird." That wiped the smile off the girl's face very quickly, and she uncrossed her arms and put her hands on her hips.

"How much can you give me for each?" She asked, her voice taking on an exasperated tone. She was being patient, _dammit_, but it was boring as all hell to be patient with little old men that spoke next-to-no common or whatever the hell they called plain-'ol English.

"I can gib you... Sebunty-fibe Girr for each." The surprise must've shown through the girl's expression, because the little old man shrugged and opened the register. "If I am to gib you any more, I wirr be habing to write you a check for more dan is in de register!"

"But... But..." Chyrin stuttered, looking rather like she was having a serious mental dilemma.

"No buts!" The old man said, finishing his counting and laying an array of bills and coins on the counter. "Hundored, two hundored, tree hundored, four hundored, fibe hundored..." He had begun to count, but his glasses slipped from his face and he went off on a tangent in Wutain as he knelt down to the floor and picked them up.

"I've got it." Chyrin said, realizing that the Gil system was pretty similar to the American Dollar system... Conveniently forgetting the part where Gil looked like a cross between Canandian and Mexican currency. She quickly counted out the notes and coins, then stuffed the requisite amount into one of her pockets. There were still a few twenty-Gil notes on the counter, and when the old man got up from the floor with his glasses once again perched on his nose she picked them up and handed them back.

"You gave me six-forty instead of just six hundred." She said, before waving and heading for the staircase back up to the street. "Thank you!" She called, breaking into a run and jumping out onto the street. Several teenaged girls girls trying on sunglasses in one of the shops screamed and jumped in surprise, then began swearing loudly at her. But it wasn't like the silver-haired teen particularly cared... After all, she had Gil and she had a _lot_ of it.

* * *

**Naa! Naa! I'm out of school! And last night I saw Bleach: Memories of Nobody on the big screen! It was so totally wicked! They did a great job dubbing it!**

**But yeah... Next update is next Friday! Ja ne!**


	4. There May Be a Problem

**The Loveless**

©®™ _Lt. Commander Richie_

**Disclaimer: **_If I owned FFVII, would I really be writing Fanfiction?_

_Chapter 4_

* * *

"What the _hell _did you do, Angeal?" Her hair tucked carefully under a brand-new hat that looked a _bit _more like it belonged, a plastic bag full of nonperishable food looped around one arm and her PSP out and on in front of her, Chyrin deftly picked her way through the rubble of Sector Five. She dutifully talked along with the cutscene of her game, charms on her system jingling merrily as she stumbled over an old pipe. "Ah, Angeal, you silly old fart..." She paused the game and turned off the system, shoving it in her pocket as she walked up the steps into the church. "How you don't have more rabid fangirls is beyond me." The teen pushed the church's doors open, raising an eyebrow at the pile of old flowerpots in the middle of the floor.

"Luuuuucy, I'm hooooome!" She yelled, setting the food down next to her mother's hat and labcoat. "Hey, delinquent hoodlums! That means get out here and tell me where the hell you guys stashed my out-cold mother!"

"Shhhhh!" The little boy of the three peeked out of the back half of the church, the large rocket lodged in the roof visible through the rotting wood of the door. "Don' make so much noise!"

"Why?"

"Shhhhh!"

"_Why_?" Chyrin whispered this time, and the little boy ran to her and pulled her down so as to whisper back.

"You mom went somewhere and left a baby behind. Ilea and Angel are tryin' to get it to nap!" The teen's eyes widened, and she looked around nervously before running for the back door and bolting through it. The two little girls sat around a well-decorated flower cart that the silver-haired girl recognized _very _well, cooing to the cargo it contained. Chyrin ran forward and planted both hands on the side of the flower cart, leaning over and staring into the mess of old blankets and church wall hangings that the baby was nestled in. The little girl had a mop of black hair, a large white streak straight down the front like a Skunk's stripe or like Rogue from the X-Men. The baby looked up from where Ilea and Angel were peering over the edge of her crib, and grinned widely with a surprisingly somewhat-full set of teeth at the silver-haired teen.

"Oh good!" The baby said, her voice exactly like Catherine Renton's. "You're back. Now you can change my diaper!" Chyrin promptly screamed and threw herself backwards, her hat falling off her head and her silver hair falling down her back.

"Mom!" She screamed, and Ilea and Angel looked at each other before looking back at the baby and then laughing loudly.

"Oh, don't worry. I didn't actually go in it. You'd've better gotten food, though, I'm starving." With an apparent heave, the once-older baby girl rolled herself over and held onto the edge of the flower cart so as to get up on her feet and peer down at her teenaged daughter.

"Hagjibah... How'd... _When did this happen_?" Chyrin finally hissed, and Ilea and Angel shrugged and then pointed at their brother. The teen whirled her head around and tried to look at him, scooting around to get a better view.

"Helway knows." They said at the same time, and the boy put his hands on the back of his head and curled in on himself so as to protect himself from whatever was coming.

"Well?" Chyrin asked, raising a silver eyebrow carefully.

"It was right after you left!" Helway squealed, flinching when Chyrin got to her feet and put her hands on her hips.

"Alright... That'll have to do. Let's go figure out a way to fix this."

* * *

"Yo! Welcome to Zoltar's Materia'n'stuff!" A little kid sat on top of a box marked 'Support', kicking his legs and smiling widely. "Hey, Zoltar! Customer!" Chyrin carefully maneuvered the old flower cart down the aisle that led to the check-out counter, raising an eyebrow at the twentysomething that came out from the back room with a sign on the door that said 'All our spells work, or they're free'.

"Hey, you need anything, let me know." He said, smiling in what he probably thought was a coy manner, or whatever the hell it was that he was trying to do to get the silver-haired teen to warm up to him.

"Actually, yeah. I need some help figuring out a counterspell." Chyrin stopped the flower cart and reached inside, picking up her baby-ified mother and sitting her on the counter in front of the shop's proprietor. The baby girl grinned and swayed in her seat, her hands grasping for the pens with plastic flowers duct taped to the ends.

"What, she got Silence cast on her by an angry babysitter or something?" The baby looked up, her glare palpable as she brushed her large silver streak out of her eyes and stuck her newly-acquired pen behind one ear.

"No. This morning I was older than your mother." Zoltar jumped backwards, the kid on the crate laughing and pointing at him. "What, you've never seen a talking baby before or something? You're the expert on this 'Materia' stuff, right? How's about you turn me back?"

"You can do it, Zoltar!" The little kid cheered, shaking one small hand triumphantly.

"Alright, let's see what I can do." The twentysomething pulled a large tome out from under the counter, plopping it down in front of Catherine's small feet and opening up the thick pages to run a finger down each column of information. "Alright..." He began, tapping one line a few times before rolling both his shirtsleeves up to his elbows and raising both of his hands above his head. "Higgitus Figgitus!" Zoltar yelled, and Chyrin burst into a fit of uncontrollable snorks and giggles.

"I'm not older." Catherine said, taking her new pen from behind her ear and brandishing it at the clerk. "Now fix this before I start getting angry."

"Listen, ladies..." The twentysomething said, putting his hands up for defense. "Anything stronger and I'll have to get clearance from the WRO!" Chyrin made a face, scoffing and putting her hands on her hips.

"Like they can do any good. Putting a limit on the strength of spells people can do is hardly gonna stop the next Genesis-freakin'-Rhapsodos from Summoning inside city limits." The both of them shrugged noncommittally, rolling their eyes. "But whatever. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. You got any Ribbons?"

"A couple, yeah. Whole bunch of colors, too. Only one Pink left, though." Chyrin sighed, picking her mother up off the counter and putting her back in the makeshift stroller.

"You got any white ones?" Chyrin asked, watching as Zoltar took the heavy tome and shoved it back under the counter. He nodded, turning and opening up a crate. From the wooden depths he pulled a long white ribbon, a slight blue tint to it that made it look like an Angel's feathers. "It's gorgeous." She breathed, ready to squeal out loud like a fangirl faced with a character plushie.

"And it's probably waaaaay beyond your price range." The little kid on the crate teased, still kicking his legs and grinning at her. Chyrin stuck out her tongue at him and pulled down one eyelid, but then turned back to Zoltar and smiled.

"Thanks for your help." She said, nodding. Suddenly, something struck her. Something important... Something she needed to get. "You hiring?" The silver-haired teen asked, hopeful. "'Cause we just got here, and what with her out of commission," she gestured to her mother, who was looking rather miffed at one of the teeth that was coming in, "I gotta get a job."

"That's very grown-up of you." Catherine stopped her fiddling with the tooth for a moment, sitting up from the bed of ripped blankets and old wall hangings to start teething on the edge of the flower cart. "God, this hurts like a bitch."

"_Moth-urrrr_, stop teething on that!" Chyrin reprimanded, shaking a finger at the baby. Zoltar and the kid both laughed, the older one carefully putting the ribbon back where he had gotten it from.

"I need a stockgirl that can reach high shelves." He smiled, turning back to the counter. The kid looked a bit put off, but didn't stop swinging his legs and didn't move from his spot. "You up for the job? You look like you need it, no offense."

"I'm definitely up for it!" The silver-haired teen grinned, picking her mother up and grabbing one of the long blankets from inside the flower cart-turned-stroller so as to hog-tie her and keep her from teething on the wooden cart. "When do I start?"

"Come by here tomorrow, and I can get you started. I'll need a name, though." The twentysomething pulled a blank timecard out of the register, picking up the pen Catherine had dropped on the counter after his failed attempt to return her to normal.

"Name's Chyrin Renton. C-H-Y-R-I-N, got it _memorized_?" Chyrin burst into a fit of giggles as she finished, leaning heavily on the flower cart so as to not fall to the floor laughing. "Man, I can't believe I just said that." She grinned, itching at the edge of her new hat.

"Yeah, I got it. Now go run home, kid, and try not to run into the same monster that got your mom." The teen nodded, carefully turning the flower cart-turned-stroller around and heading for the door.

"I'll be here as soon as I can tomorrow! I swear!" Zoltar laughed and waved as the bell jingled behind the two, and he quickly ran to the door and flipped the sign to 'Closed'.

"She was pretty tall, Zoltar. Are ya really gonna give her that job?" The kid on top of the crates was quickly moved to a different set of boxes, and the top of the wooden crate full of Support Materia was pulled off and a cardboard layer was pulled out.

"Yeah, I am." The twentysomething said, pulling out another layer. "Now take all this Materia and put it in the back room. If she's gonna work here, we've gotta get her something to do!"

* * *

**And now I have a job in a magical thrift store. This should be interesting. Warning: The next several chapters will include plot and a lot of fangirl angsting. You've been warned.**

**AND OMG, I forgot to update yesterday! I kept saying to myself 'Oh yeah, I gotta update!' over and over and over, and then I fell asleep and didn't realize until just now that I hadn't done it!  
**


	5. It's Not Fair!

**The Loveless**

_©®™ Lt. Commander Richie_

**Disclaimer: **_Summons are red, Support are blue, I still don't own, so please don't sue!_

**And, yeah... Stuff like that! Yo! Lt. Commander-chan here, just telling you that this is a mystery and don't try to solve it because I'm vague'n'shit!** **I'm also on a bit of a block when it comes to chapter ten, but I'll be over that pretty soon, too! It's all because of freaking Kumoricon in six weeks and all the stuff I'm doing for that, I swear!**

_Chapter 5_

* * *

"Take a bath." They had been stuck there for a month. A _whole. Freaking. Month_. Luckily, Chyrin was able to keep her job at Zoltar's. At first she thought her hair would simply grow back in at the roots in its original muddy brown, but when her hair got longer but her roots were still silver, she had tried dying it. Needless to say, the dye didn't take and she was stuck with silver hair.

"I take a shower every day at the Community Center when I come home from work! You know that!" Catherine may have still been a baby, but that didn't mean that she didn't still hold some sway over her daughter.

"You smell like you haven't taken a shower in _weeks_, Chyrin. Take a bath!" Chyrin rolled her eyes behind her blindfold, flipping her messy silver locks over her shoulder. Because she was now getting a steady paycheck and couldn't possibly live in the same clothes for a whole month, the first thing the teen had done when she had gotten her first check was to cash it and then run to the nearest Discount SOLDIER Surplus store for a few sleeveless turtlenecks, a pair of boots and a couple pairs of pants. Next month she'd get herself some 2nd Class armor, and if she applied her employee discount she could get herself a nice-quality Materia-usage-based sword within three.

"If you haven't noticed, it's seven in the morning. Community Center's closed." The baby-sized older woman took a teething ring shaped like a Chocobo from her mouth, gesturing to the pool at the end of the church. The two stood and sat in a stroller, respectively, in the center of the walkway towards what had once been the flower patch, glaring at each other.

"Then bathe in the big, convenient pool of water _right there_." Chyrin looked appalled, her silver eyebrows disappearing into her hair.

"I can't do that! That'd be like... Sacrilege!" The baby-woman scoffed, a rather interesting sound coming from a baby.

"Please. You're not in the least bit religious. Now take a bath, and get to work. Those triplets'll be here soon enough to watch me." Chyrin shook her head, appalled.

"I thought I explained it to you, _muth-urrrr_! This is a _church_. Not just any church, but the church of the last Cetra and where Cloud-frikkin'-Strife was something along the lines of brought back to life! I can't bathe in that water!" The skunk-stripe-haired baby fixed her daughter-slash-caretaker with a glare, putting her hands on her hips.

"Don't give me that! Those are pitiful excuses, now jump in there and wash some of the stink off before I get those triplets to do it for me!" Chyrin threw her hands above her head, nearly to the point of freaking out.

"It's not water!" She yelled, a last-ditch effort to get her mother off her back like the clingy little Koala-imp-thing she was. "It's the cure for an otherwise-fatal disease!" The baby raised an eyebrow, incredulous.

"I highly doubt that." She said, crossing her arms and putting the Chocobo-shaped teething ring back in her mouth and chewing sullenly.

"No, seriously! The last Cetra gave a spring of the Lifestream or whatever the hell that stuff is made of to AVALANCHE so that they could cure the Geostigma! The same stuff made the Remnants disappear! I have silver hair like them, I don't wanna risk being sent to the Promised Land!" The silver-haired teen conveniently left out that she had already put parts of her body in the pool and nothing had dissolved, what since she highly doubted that saying anything about it would be good for her.

"I thought that when a person dies they dissolve back into the 'Lifestream'," Catherine paused, making air-quotes with her chubby little baby fingers. "Or whatever the hell that glowing green stuff you showed me was. So what's this 'Promised Land'?" Again with the air-quotes.

"The Promised Land is an unending field of flowers that is promised to every Cetra... Or something like that. Look, all I know is that where the land is fertile, there's Mako, and where there's Mako... Well, wherever the heck it is that all the dead and departed people from Final Fantasy Seven go, by some stupid coincidence that may or may not have anything to do with divine Cetran intervention most of them end up in the Promised Land." Chyrin paused, putting a hand to her chin and looking down at her somewhat-dumbstruck mother. "Except Grimoire. Poor Grimoire... He doesn't need that... Actually, Lucrecia too. But if the rocks are talking, then she's still alive in the crystal so she doesn't count..." The silver-haired teen continued to ramble, garnering a raised eyebrow, then two, from her mother.

"Honey? Just go to work. I get it." Catherine finally said, pushing herself to her hands and knees so as to look over the side of the flower cart she resided in. The triplets, Angel, Ilea and Helway, stood at the door to the church. Behind them, they struggled to drag something. As it turned out, it was a rather large yellow and blue cast-iron chest. They deposited it on the floor, panting.

"You kids be good, okay?" Chyrin asked, ruffling the hairdos of each as she passed them and their box. "I'll betcha that there's something good in that thing. The yellow and blue ones are ShinRa stuff." The three kids looked at each other and grinned, before Helway ran to go get Catherine so that they could begin working on the combination. It was a simple dial lock, bright red in color, and Chyrin decided against getting an early start to take a look at it. She reached out and tapped the center, and a little screen above the dial began counting down from twenty.

"What's it doing?" Angel asked, surprised. Ilea looked at her sister and went wide-eyed.

"Maybe it's really a bomb!" The little girl wailed, and the two clutched each other for safety.

"Don't worry, it's just the time limit for dialing the chest open. You can't pass the correct numbers as you get to them, and you have to confirm every number." Chyrin looked at her watch, and her eyes went wide. "Oh crud, forget helping you guys! I gotta run or Zoltar'll get me for sure! Today's stock day!" With a screech, the teen ran out the church door and into the sunlight.

* * *

"Am I late?" Chyrin ran in the front door of Zoltar's Materia'n'Stuff, panting for breath. The kid sitting on top of a pile of crates, Gene, was dancing along to the music in his headphones but took one out of an ear and pointed to the clock above the door to the back room.

"Ten seconds to punch in!" Gene grinned widely, and Chyrin nearly vaulted herself over the front counter to grab her punch card and stick it into the scanner hanging on the back side of the door to the back room. It beeped green, which meant she was on time once again.

"That was close." Chyrin sighed, putting her punch card back in its slot and grabbing her apron from the hook behind the counter. It had her name on a nametag, and every pocket was full of talismans and orbs of half-Mastered Materia she was working on. One pocket had a little faceless and limp doll that doubled as a Ju-Ju bag half hanging out of it, its little limp arms flopping every time she took a step.

"That day of the week!" A cry came from the back room, and Zoltar came out with a large crate marked 'Accessories'. It was delivery day, so they had four new boxes stacked behind the counter. Chyrin screamed happily, doing a little dance and something that looked like random flailing. The store's owner plopped the box down on the counter, holding out a hand. Gene handed the silver-haired girl between them a crowbar, and she handed it off the the older man. He quickly pried the lid off the wooden box, and shifted a layer of synthetic packing grass off the top and drew out a large plastic-sealed and zipped case full of beautiful Ribbons. After that he drew a case of Laurels, then a Black Hood, and much to the astonishment of everyone in the room he drew a Feather Cap.

"... Is this our box?" Both Zoltar and Chyrin voiced at the same time, looking at the decorative _thing _encrusted with Chocobo feathers that was probably worth more than everything in the room. With renewed vigor, Zoltar set about throwing packing grass everywhere to try and find anything else. X-Potions, Mystiles and Independent Materia were quickly placed in a line on the counter, followed by a series of Command Materia and a bunch of Support Materia.

"What's next, freakin' Minerva's head?" Zoltar leaned out of the box to look at her funny, Gene reciprocating the look. But he leaned back into the box, and pulled out the final item. It was a beautiful piece of bright red Summon Materia, shining brightly with a mystic-looking circle reflecting ghost-like in the light.

"If it's something dinky, like the Choco/Mog... Can I have it to Master it?" Chyrin put out a lip, her eyes wide and pleading.

"You're not touching this one. It's BahamutZERO." The two minors' eyes went wide, awe shining in their features. "Same goes for all this stuff. We're packing it all back up. If nobody comes to claim it, then we'll sell it. But until then, this gets put in the safe." Chyrin and Gene groaned, but neither protested any further. The bell on the door jingled, signaling a customer, and Zoltar quickly packed everything back up and picked the box up. An older woman began perusing the overstuffed aisles occasionally stopping and picking things out that she would put in one of the baskets she had picked up by the door.

"You need me to set anything out?" Chyrin asked as Zoltar came back out, the crowbar he had used to open the crate still in his hand.

"Yeah, actually. Open up the big long crate and set out the new swords. Just got a couple in from a new dealer." The twentysomething handed the teen the crowbar, and then sat down on an old overturned crate and lounged back. "And don't go swinging them, this time."

The crate wasn't a _particularly_ large affair, two feet wide, about eight feet long and a foot and a half deep. Chyrin inserted the crowbar in one end of the box, pushing down hard with all her weight. The nails popped up on that end, and she skirted her way around the trashcan next to the end of the counter so as to get to the other end. Every few feet along the side, she would insert the crowbar and pop part of the lid open. When she finally reached the other end, she inserted the crowbar in as far as it would go and pushed down as hard as she could. The whole lid popped up with a squeak that made the old lady perusing the Voodoo aisle jump and nearly drop the animal-shaped Gris-Gris bag she was holding. Seeing something under the packing grass, Chyrin's eyes widened considerably. She ripped the beige plastic grass away from the hilt of the topmost, confronted with burnished gold.

"Oh no..." She moaned, dropping her handfuls of packing grass and sinking to her knees. Zoltar sprung to his feet, using the edge of the counter as a jumping block to vault himself a considerable way to the teen's side. The little old lady looked a bit confused, but when Gene shrugged she went back to stocking up on Ju-Ju and Gris-Gris Bags.

"Chyrin... Kid, you alright?" Her employer asked, but the silver-haired teen simply sobbed harder.

"It's not fair..." She muttered between sobs. "It's not fair!"

* * *

**G'wan. Guess. I know you want to.  
**


	6. Dreams And Honor?

**The Loveless**

_©®™ Lt. Commander Richie_

**Disclaimer: **_I own only_ _Chyrin, Zoltar, Gene, the little old lady,_ _the triplets, and anyone else_ _I may have made up. Catherine, however, belongs to my mother. Because, quite frankly, she _is _my mother._

**Happy 4th of July! Hope you have a great time eating barbecue and shooting off fireworks! Oh, and if you live in a state where mortars are legal or on a Native American reservation where those are also legal, I hate you because I live in a state where anything eight feet off the ground is illegal!**

**Just remember, don't hold stuff in your hands unless they're Roman Candles. You'll blow something off like that.**

_Chapter 6_

* * *

Beige packing grass littered the floor, the sign on the front door turned to 'Closed' and the lights all off except the ones above and behind the counter. Gene had been sent back to his and Zoltar's parents' house, and though he had protested at first he had eventually obliged. A long and thick sword glinted dully in the harsh over head lighting, small rust spots dotting the newly machine-burnished etched sides. The sharp edge of the sword was riddled with nicks, chips and dents, and the golden hilt looked as though it had seen better days. Chyrin's face was tear-stained as she ran one hand down the long blade, a barely-there and slightly-hysterical laugh escaping her lips.

"Are you sure this is the same one?" Zoltar asked, caring like an older brother to the teen. She nodded, and then broke down into choked sobs again.

"It was forged-" she sniffed loudly, biting her lower lip and trying to stay strong. "Comissioned for First Class SOLDIER Angeal Hewley by his parents when he left to go join ShinRa. It represented his honor as a SOLDIER. When he died, he gave it to First Class Zack Fair..." She trailed off once again, closing her eyes and grinding the heels of her palms into them. "And when Zack died at the hands of ShinRa in 0008 012, he gave it to Cloud Strife, who then went on to kill Sephiroth with it."

"How do you know all this?" Zoltar finally asked, and Chyrin shook her head.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you. Who did you get this shipment from?" The silence hung between them like some sort of iron curtain, but then it shattered as the shopkeeper spoke.

"Now that I really think on it... I don't really know. It was a new supplier, and I knew the boxes looked a bit different... But I didn't think about where they got everything." Again the silence was hung, and Chyrin bit her lip again as she ran her hand down the long blade of the Buster Sword.

"Use brings about wear, tear and rust. What did you do to this sword, Cloud?" She asked softly, eying all the nicks in the blade that stood out like a bright pink in a sea of white. "Do you know where the Seventh Heaven bar is?" The silver-haired girl asked, her voice becoming louder and steadier as she ran a hand down the red grip that had seen so many users. It truly was a piece of history, this sword.

"Three cross-streets down from the Hazama Warehouse... Why?" The Hazama Warehouse was a good forty-minute walk away, across several major WRO construction sites and the Memorial Square with its newly-constructed Meteor monument that had been surrounded by a wonderful flower patch of the same kind of Lilies that Aerith had once grown. Another three streets after that in a city packed with people... It would take her a good two hours or so to get all the way there.

"I'm taking the Buster Sword back to Cloud. He needs to know that some Jenova-damned grave robber took his best friend's headstone." Zoltar raised an eyebrow at the teen, crossing his arms.

"And how do you plan on getting it there? I'm all for giving back stolen property, but you're fifteen. That sword is half your size, and probably weighs twice what you do. How're you going to lift it?" To both their surprise, Chyrin wrapped both hands around the handle and lifted the Buster Sword from the crate with the rest of the weapons with a minimum of struggle.

"Probably has some Materia that counteracts the weight embedded in it somewhere." The teen said, mostly to assure herself that she wasn't gaining super strength. "Do you have any magnet-backed armor? I don't wanna walk downtown with this thing held on my shoulder." Zoltar shrugged, and went down the armor aisle to pull something out. When he came back, he held in his hands a shoulder pauldron with leather suspenders to hold it up. In the center of the back piece was a large magnet, strong enough to hold a sword like the Buster Sword on someone's back. Chyrin carefully leaned the large sword against the register, shrugging the armor on and attaching the clasps to keep it on to the requisite spaces on her old secondhand SOLDIER pants.

"C'mon, kid. I'll help you with this thing." The shopkeeper picked up the large sword, showing no exertion as he hefted it onto his shoulder. "This thing really is light! You'd think that a SOLDIER would have a heavier sword." The two walked out of the shop, the door locking behind them and the big metal sign advertising what they had tilting slightly on its base.

"You really gotta fix that thing." The silver-haired girl said, itching at the edge of her beanie that she had shoved all her hair under. "Now gimmie the sword." Zoltar handed it over, and stepped away as Chyrin twirled it once and then stuck it behind her on her back. She tentatively let go, and when it didn't fall to the ground she laughed out loud. "Never figured magnet-sheath armor would work!"

"G'wan. Return that thing and get back by noon! I need you to stock shelves!" Chyrin set off at a run down the side street, but paused and ran back so as to grab one of the fliers for the store from the box by the door.

"I got it Zoltar! I won't be late!" With a final glint of the newly-burnished but still spotty sword, the teenager disappeared around the corner at the end of the street and into the crowd.

"I wonder if she realizes she'd going the wrong way..." Zoltar began, only to watch as the girl ran back past the side-street in the opposite direction in a blur of dark blue, white and yellow.

* * *

"I'm so lost..." Chyrin muttered, looking around for a recognizable landmark... _Any _landmark. "Hey, dude!" She ran over towards a guy about her age, stopping right next to him. "Do you know how to get to the Memorial Square?" The guy looked at her funny, but shrugged and pointed down the street.

"Two blocks that way. There's a big billboard for _LOVELESS_ on one of the buildings... Y'know, one of the old ones?" Chyrin smiled and half-saluted him, and took off towards the old-looking green, black and magenta billboard with _My Bloody Valentine _written down the side. The street was oddly clear, and the silver-haired girl ducked out into the bike lane in the storm drain ditch to jog in a clearer path. People stared, of course... People that remembered the Buster Sword on the backs of three different men, not some teenaged girl in secondhand SOLDIER stuff and a bright white and yellow sleeveless jacket. The entire trip had been that way. All through the walkways criss-crossing the WRO construction sites on the highways, men and women with red armbands and beanies in white suits had watched as she dodged around cement mixers and jumped over piles of wood and rebar.

"Watch where you're going!" A bright yellow pickup sped in front of the teen, and she skidded to a stop as a blue and white van that looked eerily like a VW van continued in front of her. As soon as traffic slowed she started up again, jumping from the street up onto the sidewalk surrounding the monument in Memorial Square. She looked up for a moment, her mouth falling open slightly in awe at the depiction of Meteor... Before a man in a black insulated vest slammed into her side and sent her sprawling.

"-The hell?" Chyrin spat out, watching as the guy stepped over her and continued on his way. She slowly made her way to her feet, but noticing a missing weight on her back she spun around and quickly grabbed the red handle of the Buster Sword and slung it back onto her back. She spun around a few times, finally jumping up onto the small wall cordoning the flower patch surrounding the monument off from the rest of the foot traffic. _Now _she could see...

"There!" She pointed and smiled, finally spotting the green sign for the Hazama Warehouse and jumping down into the crowd in the direction she had finally found. She fought her way through the crowded street, nearly getting clipped several times by people in cars and on motorcycles. She was making good time, what since it had only taken her an hour because of several emptier-than-usual streets. She ran down the side street past the Warehouse, and stopped at the first intersection. Looking around, she counted on her fingers a few times, then continued on again. Finally a cement angel came into view, and Chyrin slowed down and dug in one of her pockets to pull out the flier for _Zoltar's Materia'n'Stuff_. She slowed to a stop in front of the bar, turning her head slightly so as to look at the hilt of the stolen sword magnetized to her back. Whoever took that sword from its rightful place and tried to sell it... They were going to pay.

Chyrin bit her lip, afraid to approach the front door of the bar. How many people would be inside? What if it was closed? What if _Cloud _was there, he had the _First Tsurugi_, and he chopped her into little cheese cubes with that one Limit Break he used on _Sephiroth_?

"I'm doomed." She muttered, before walking up and reaching for both the handle of the sword and the door knob. "Better get this over with."

* * *

Tifa's day had begun nicely. To be quite frank, it was a great day despite the nasty overcast that the sky was. Vincent and Yuffie had just passed through between WRO missions, Cloud was in the kitchen and making his and the kids' breakfast, Barret was coming by later that day to pick Marlene up, Shelke and Reeve were upstairs putting together a new Moogle for Cait Sith and Cid had just called saying that he and Nanaki had found the blueprints for an old airship in the library at Cosmo Canyon. Yes, today was a great day... Except for one thing. She had noticed, several minutes ago, a girl run up in front of the bar. She'd had a disturbingly familiar sword held on her back with an outmoded set of magna-sheath armor, and had paused several times as if undecided. The bartender shook her head, returning to cleaning the glasses at the bar. But when the door slammed open and the girl ran in, bringing her hand to a familiar red handle and drawing from her back the Buster Sword, the glass was dropped into the sink and the fighting gloves were out of her pocket. But the girl didn't attack.

"I'm so sorry about all this." The girl said softly, putting a flier down on the bar before switching her grip so that she could take the blade of the Buster Sword in both hands and lay it gently on the counter. The two stood in silence for a moment, and then the girl spoke. "It's not my fault."

"Tifa? I heard a crash, are you-" Cloud came out from the kitchen, a plate in his hand and a fork in the other. He stilled as he saw the sword on the counter, his eyes becoming hard as he glared at the girl that had brought it. "Who are you?" He finally asked, eyes narrowing. "Why do you have that sword?" The girl began to break down, putting her face in her hands as she bit her lip.

"I swear it's not my fault. I work in a shop across town called Zoltar's Materia'n'Stuff, and it was delivery day today. We got a shipment from a different vendor than usual, and this was in the weapons crate. I- I grew up seeing this sword everywhere... I just thought I would bring it back to you..." The girl trailed off, hiccuping a few times before wiping her eyes on the white wrist guard on her left wrist. "It was Angeal Hewley's right? Then Zack Fair's and then yours." She looked at Cloud, and she really did look sorry. She looked more than sorry, actually, she looked like seeing this sword taken from where it was supposed to be had hurt her deeper than anything else could. "I hope you get whoever took this sword. It represents honor, and that should never be sullied by greed."

Cloud sat the plate he had been taking to Tifa down on the counter, putting a hand on the martial artist's shoulder. She nodded, taking the plate and going back into the kitchen to the kids.

"How do you know that?" He finally asked, his voice calm and collected. The girl sighed forlornly, sitting herself down on a barstool.

"You don't know how many times people have asked me that today." The girl paused, itching at the edge of her beanie. Very light wisps of hair fell from her covered hairline, and she continued. "Use brings about wear, tear, and rust. But so does disuse. I swear that this sword came to us this way, but you should work to keep it like this. It's a work of art, Mr. Strife. Only one in the world." The girl got up, and Cloud picked up the sword. She was an odd-looking girl, really. All clad in old SOLDIER fatigues like a kid playing make-believe.

"I know." And for some reason, probably the look about the girl that seemed like she was a kicked puppy... He answered. "Thank you for bringing this back."

"If anything else shows up, you'll be the first to know." She walked towards the door, but then turned and smiled. "Hey, Mr. Strife?" Cloud looked up, attentive even though his blank face didn't show it. "Do you still have dreams?" The blond thought for a moment, but shook his head.

"I don't know. At least, I don't think so... I've done everything I've wanted to do." Even though he knew that he didn't know this girl, he was still grateful that she had brought back the sword. A few answers couldn't hurt, could they?

"But do you still have your honor?" The girl was grinning widely now, itching at the edge of her beanie once more. Cloud shook his head. The girl was odd, definitely odd. It was almost like she knew... No, she couldn't, could she?

"Why?" The blond asked, rubbing his thumb across the hilt of the Buster Sword in gratitude for having it back in his possession.

"The people call you a hero." The girl said, opening the door and stepping halfway out. "But you can't be a hero if you don't have dreams... And honor." When the door closed behind her, Cloud sat the sword back up on the counter. Whoever had cleaned it had cleaned it badly, there were still spots of rust and dirt all over it. From under the bar he drew his cleaning kit, but stopped and looked up as someone knocked on the bar's window. Light shone through, the first all day, and made the white-blond hair on the girl that had brought the sword back glow like silver. She had taken her beanie off, finally.

"Hey!" She called through the glass. "It wasn't your fault! If you want your honor back, you gotta realize that nobody blames you! You don't need forgiveness, remember that!" With a final swish of long and shining silver hair, she was gone. Suddenly, it struck the blond like so many important realizations had. Her hair hadn't been white-blond and shining a silver color, her hair really _was _silver. Cloud threw himself over the bar and grabbed the Buster Sword along the way, racing out of the bar and into the street to give chase to the girl. But she was already long gone, blended into the throng of people at the end of the street.

* * *

**Deep down, I'm a really frightened fangirl at heart. But I swear, I didn't mean to do it! The beanie was just really itchy!**

**Er... Yeah. Once again, don't own it. Just a very wonderful sitar just about as big as me by the name of Demyx.  
**


	7. Morph?

**The Loveless**

_©®™ Lt. Commander Richie_

**Disclaimer: **_SWEET HOLY MOTHER JENOVA, MY TEETH HURT! I've got braces, and they hurt so baaaaad... I think one of the teeth they're attached to is being pulled out.  
_

_Chapter 7_

* * *

"Shitshitshitshit..." Chyrin threw herself around a corner, pulling at her long hair in annoyance before balling it all up and stuffing it under her beanie. She shouldn't have done that, she _should not _have _done that_... "Bad move!" The teen cried, gripping her head with both hands. "Silver hair and Cloud Strife do not continuing to live make!" With a burst of fear-induced adrenaline, the silver-haired teen shot off like a rocket towards Zoltar's Materia'n'Stuff. This much visible WRO involvement in everything probably meant post-Dirge of Cerberus, which meant that Genesis had finally come out of hiding and had Weiss the Immaculate with him, which meant that everyone was screwed real soon because he was gonna start Summoning inside city limits again...

**HWACK!**

"FUCK!" Not watching where she had been going, Chyrin had run head-first into a metal lamp post. Several people around her laughed at her misfortune, while a few mothers covered their children's inquisitive ears. The teen shook her head and got to her feet, woozy, before continuing in a slightly-slower and more attentive run. She continued at her steady pace for quite a while, her mind a mess of thoughts as she checked her watch as she ran. She had just enough time to take a rest if she needed it, but she wanted to be early to see what else had been in the deliveries. There could be anything... And anything else stolen that she recognized would be immediately returned to whatever owner it had come from. Unless it was Hojo's. Then she would destroy it with that new Bahamut ZERO.

After a while, Chyrin's feet met wooden planks as she ran across the WRO construction site halfway between Seventh Heaven and Zoltar's Materia'n'Stuff. A few of the workers waved, and she paused long enough to wave back before jumping onto the third rung of a large scaffolding and beginning the long climb. It took her a good five minutes to get all the way to the top, and by the time she did the sun was directly overhead. The silver-haired teen paused, looking at her watch once more before turning to look down the long expanse of empty highway that stretched out before her. She whooped happily, taking off at a brand new run down the empty six lanes for the blocked-off exit that led to the still just as droll and hum-drum as any other part bit of Edge that her workplace was stashed in.

After a while, the teen finally flopped over and simply laid on the empty highway. She breathed hard, but was content that whoever it was from AVALANCHE that Cloud had more than likely sent after her wasn't following her. If they even had been to begin with... But that was being cautious. That wasn't paranoia at all. After all, it wasn't like Cloud would come after her himself with the freaking seven-in-one-or-whatever sword and slice her into cheese cubes... Right? The girl watched a solitary weed sway in the breeze from her vantage point, and as she moved to touch it her armor scraped on the ground.

It had come to her a while ago that this was all real, and nothing was going to be the way it had been once upon a time. Chyrin, as clichéd as it seemed, was totally and absolutely stuck exactly where she was, in a little world full of little people that by all rights should be made of hexagonal shapes with beautifully-rendered backgrounds. But they weren't, and she was stuck in Edge because her mother was stuck in the body of a baby. If she hadn't been, she would have carted the old crone off long ago to go see Junon and the Mythril Mines, and Gold Saucer and Cosmo Canyon's perpetual sunset... And maybe have a good cry over the Lifestream pit that used to be Banora and go to Modeoheim _just for the view_.

"This sucks." Chyrin muttered, having finally regained her breath. She pushed herself to her feet and looked around, wiping a few fallen bangs from her face and pushing them back up under her hat. With a sigh she looked at her watch, before her eyes widened at the time and she struck out in a run. She had ten minutes to get to the highway exit and all the way to Zoltar's before she was late!

* * *

"If anyone asks if I'm here, especially if they have a large sword... _I'm not here!_" Chyrin threw herself through the door to Zoltar's Materia'n'Stuff, her eyes wide as she ran down the closest aisle and promptly tried to shove herself behind a display of dried herbs and a few stuffed and mounted small monsters. Zoltar watched in amusement, a phone to one ear. The person on the other line called out, and he snapped his attention back to the receiver.

"No, I'm sorry ma'am, I didn't hear you. What was that?" He paused for a moment, raising an eyebrow in Chyrin's direction as a mounted Sahagin head rattled off the wall and nearly fell on her foot. It bounced a few times, and the teen scrambled to pick it up and put it back on the wall before anything bad happened to it or something fell off of it.

"No ma'am, we don't deal in stolen goods. Hmm? Zoltar paused, looking confused. "No, I don't employ people that I know look rather unsavory... Why?" Chyrin drew a hand across her neck several times, looking panicked. The shopkeep raised both eyebrows at her, but paid attention to the woman on the other end.

"Ma'am, I'm going to have to ask you... Where did you get this number?" Chyrin disentangled herself from behind the herb display, shaking a stinging nettle off her pants and back into its box. "Well I'm sorry, ma'am, but I don't advertise in your part of the city. If the girl gave you that flier, I can assure you that she didn't work for me." A few moments passed, and Zoltar quickly reached down and rang a bell attached to the underside of the cash register. It was the same kind as the one that was attached to the front door of the shop.

"I'm terribly sorry about this, ma'am, there's been a grievous misunderstanding... Oh, hello, welcome to Zoltar's! I'll be with you in a mo- oh dear, that looks rather terrible." The twentysomething shopkeep looked as though he was having a ball leading on the woman on the other side of the line... Who Chyrin assumed was probably Tifa Lockhart. "Ma'am, we can finish this discussion later if you like, if you would simply call this number again in about, say... An hour? I have a magical emergency to take care of." Before the barkeep on the other end could get a word in edgewise, the phone was in the receiver and Zoltar whirled around to look at the rather meek-looking Chyrin on the other side of the checkout counter with her apron already on and her hair carefully jammed under her beanie.

"You needed me to stock shelves?" She asked, looking rather sheepish. The shopkeep sighed, rolling his eyes and leaning back to sit on the crate full of new armor.

"You may as well." He said, picking up the crowbar from its customary spot and jamming it into the side of the crate he sat next to. "Put that magna-sheath armor back in the armor section, while you're at it." He reached into a pocket and took out a little green ball of Materia, chucking it to the silver-haired teen. "And practice casting morph on yourself."

Chyrin reached out and just barely caught the Materia, squeaking in surprise as it flared to life and turned a little potted plant next to her into a Razor Weed. With a scream she stomped on the offending monster until it squealed and wilted over.

"I thought Morph only turned monsters into items!" She screamed, throwing the Morph back to her employer. Zoltar caught it in one hand and threw it back, and this time it bounced off Chyrin's forehead and fell to the ground. In a flash of light she was suddenly a middle-aged woman with wispy dark hair and a crooked, hunched back wearing a lacy white apron and a frilly flower-printed dress.

"It actually turns anything into anything else. But it only ever turns one thing into one other thing." Confusion must have been evident on Chyrin's newly-wrinkled face, because Zoltar launched into an explanation. "Morph will always only turn a Tonberry into a Ribbon, and always only turn a Ghost Ship into that book I can't remember the name of. When you have a Morph used on you, you will always only turn into a little old Junonese lady in a flower-print dress." Chyrin groaned, stooping to pick up the Morph from the floor. In another flash, she was once again herself. "Don't feel so bad!" The shopkeep smiled, crossing his arms and leaning his head against the same crate he had stuck the crowbar into. "I turn into a six-year-old Corelian girl with dreadlocks and a pair of Chocobo overalls."

Chyrin couldn't help it, she doubled over laughing. The idea that her boss turned into a little girl when faced with Morph Materia was just... Actually, why wasn't he a little girl now? She had hit him with it!

"How-" The teen began, gasping for breath as she wiped tears of mirth from her eyes. "How are you not the little girl right now? I just hit you with it!" Zoltar lifted up the sleeve of his tee-shirt, exposing a green ribbon tied around his upper arm.

"It's technically a status ailment, since it does some damage to you every time you use it." Chyrin grumbled to herself and stuffed the Materia into her apron's pocket, her Ju-Ju bag turning into a Gris-Gris bag. She yelped and reactivated it, turning it back. With a sigh, the girl put it into her empty pocket.

"Just remember, if anyone comes calling and has a large sword, I don't exist." Zoltar mockingly saluted his employee, and she scratched at her beanie before grabbing a stack of imported magic-use-based swords and heading for the weapons section.

* * *

**Cloud will come after her... Eventually. I swear.**

**So yeah. Braces. Fun-fun. I'm not giving them to Chyrin, because that would just be cruel.**

**Kumoricon in 50 days. Are you ready to rock? I'm not...**


	8. They Call You A Hero

**The Loveless**

_©®™ Lt. Commander Richie_

**Disclaimer: **_WITH YOUR DRILL, THRUST TO THE SKY! Er... yeah. Can you tell I've been watching Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann? KaminaYoko FTW, and Viral is amazingly epically Kadaj-like in all his psychotic epic-ness. I can't wait until it's dubbed, can you? That'll be so totally awesome!__ Warning, the chapter ahead contains fangirl sappyness!  
_

_Chapter 8_

* * *

"Hello?" The bell on the door jingled merrily, and in a sudden motion Chyrin ducked behind a display of Bokken with single Materia slots that she had just finished setting up. She reached into her pocket and grabbed the Morph Materia, and in a flash she was an old woman once again. The woman that walked through the door seemed familiar to the newly-Morphed teen, and she slowly walked out from behind the display and picked up a shopping basket so as to look like she was simply browsing.

"Welcome to Zoltar's! You need anything in particular?" Zoltar came out from the back room, all smiles and wide arms. His expression darkened when he saw who it was, however. Chyrin raised an eyebrow... She had seen the woman somewhere before, maybe it was one of Zoltar's exes?

"She has a baby, Zoltar. I saw her walking around with a baby yesterday. That girl needs help!" insulated jacket, long black skinny jeans, well-combed brown hair... No, it couldn't be. Could it?

"None of my employees are here, Lamaida. Chyrin is included in that." _Woah_. Lamaida? Crazy-and-convinced-Chyrin-was-a-prostitute-Lamaida? How long had _she_ been poking around? ... Hell, how long had Zoltar been _hiding it_ from her? This day just kept getting better and better.

"She got back an hour ago and hasn't left since, now tell me where she is! That girl will get herself into just more and more trouble if she doesn't check herself into a center real soon." Okay, yeah... This woman was a total loon. Chyrin grabbed a white wooden cane from a pile of imports, and began hobbling her way towards the front counter. On her way, she tipped a few Materia into her basket, along with a few Mind Sources and a Luck Source. Coming up behind the bickering two, she took the cane in one hand and smacked it as hard as she could across Lamaida's backside. The woman yelped and whirled around, visibly startled.

"Watch what you say about my granddaughter." Chyrin said, her old lady voice still carrying quite a force behind it. Lamaida raised an eyebrow at the woman as she sat her basket on the counter, unsure on how to proceed.

"Your... Granddaughter?" She asked, nonplussed. Chyrin nodded, raising the cane she had picked up and waving it threateningly. Lamaida shrank away from it, her eyes widening.

"Yes my granddaughter, Chyrin Renton! That girl has nothing but good and a little hero worship for the old ShinRa days in her! The nerve of you, ranting on about things you know nothing of!" Zoltar looked as though he was about to burst out laughing, biting his lower lip in a futile effort to stem the snickers he was making.

"But... The baby... And, she's a Slum rat..." Chyrin nearly grinned as she smacked Lamaida once more, finally finding an outlet for her frustrations about the day.

"That's her baby sister, you little chit! And she doesn't live in the Slums, she lives with me!" With a final whack, Lamaida was sent sprawling on the floor. She quickly scrambled to her feet, glaring at the old woman.

"I hardly believe you, ma'am... But I'll leave it be until I can get some solid proof." With a jingle of the front door's bell, the nuisance of a woman was definitely gone. Chyrin reached into her lacy white apron's pocket and activated the Morph Materia, turning back into herself as soon as she was sure that the nutjob was gone.

"Is she some sort of 'I got out of Honeybee, you can too!' success story that's taken it upon herself to save all the prostitutes? Because _damn_, she's going about it all wrong." Chyrin walked down the aisle she had come from and placed the cane back where she had found it, going back to the front counter so as to grab her half-full basket of items and Materia. "And how long have you been hiding that she's been stalking me?"

"Depends, how long ago was it that you kicked her in the head while in a hospital?" The two glared at each other, but other than that didn't say anything. Finally, the teen snatched her basket up and went to go put the things back. The Materia clinked together as she shoved them back into their places, and she hung the Luck Sources back up by their ribbons and the Mind Sources by the chains they dangled from.

"You should get Gene back in here... You need to keep trying to figure out who stole that sword from where it belonged." Zoltar nodded once, heading for the private phone in the back.

Ten minutes passed, only the buzz of fluorescent lights above accompanying Chyrin as she took new merchandise after new merchandise from behind the counter and loaded it into where it needed to be. When she had finished with everything else, she slowly approached the long crate that had held the stolen sword from that morning. There was still a thick layer of packing grass over the second layer of weapons inside, and with extreme trepidation she shifted the synthetic beige material aside so as to gaze at the layer of shining metal implements below. On top and taking up much of the space on one side was an old red ShinRa-issue Gunblade, a huge box of bullets right next to it. There were several smaller swords and axes all piled around and under it, making for a mass of sharpened steel that Chyrin certainly didn't want to stick her hand into simply to attempt to draw out a weapon that even a Genesis Copy looked like it had a hard time hefting.

Brushing even more of the beige packing grass out of the way, the silver-haired teen nearly let out a shriek when she saw a double-bladed katana sitting on a pile of broadswords all laid over the barrel of the Gunblade. But she stifled it, and looked closer. The Tsukamaki was purple and lacking a yellow stripe up the bottom side, and there was not a single ribbon tied to the Tsuba. In fact, the Tsuba was of a completely different design. There were flowers and clouds all over it, and the charm under the Tsukamaki was a golden one with Sakura blossoms and stars made of precious gems. A beautiful green jade bead painted with Wutain characters was threaded onto a long purple silk cord that was attached to the end of the handle, which tied into an intricate knot and ended in a tassle. All-in-all, it was a beautiful sword.

"Thank freakin' Minerva I didn't have to return another sword." Dutifully, Chyrin began to pull swords from the box. She stacked sword after sword on the counter, before picking up the pile and heading off for the exotic weapons corner of the shop. It was annoying work, but hell... Someone had to do it, and she got a steady paycheck.

* * *

The sun was sinking under the city skyline, painting the leftover Mako smog varying shades of atmosphere that shouldn't have existed by the time that Chyrin was finished sorting and putting the swords on display. Looking at the clock, she realized that there was just about ten minutes until closing time. Sighing, Chyrin grabbed the push-broom and began sweeping all the tracked-in grime from the city towards the front door. The lights fuzzed slightly overhead as she worked, fluorescents glinting off every sphere of Materia on every shelf down the aisle she was working in. Gene laughed softly at his favorite cartoon, his legs kicking up in the air as he laid on his stomach on top of a crate to watch on a small portable TV.

"Yo, Gene." The kid looked up, his legs no longer swinging. "Open up the front door so I can sweep all this out into the street." The kid turned off the TV and hopped down from the crate, pushing aside a cardboard box so as to get to the front door and open it up. With one hand the little boy held the door open, and with the other he grasped blindly for the door stopper that laid just beyond his reach behind the door. Chyrin pushed all the dirt that had been tracked inside out the door, making a cloud of dust fly out into the street. The two of them coughed, and the door swung shut with a creak as Gene let go.

"Thanks, li'l dude." The teen tousled the little boy's hair, and he stuck his tongue out before climbing back up to his perch and his TV to watch his cartoons. The black beanie began to slide up Chyrin's forehead as she leaned over to pull the entry rug back to its place, and she itched at her silver hairline before pulling it off and shaking out her long hair. In one hand she held her hat as she walked back towards the supply cupboard situated between two coolers full of perishable magical supplies, and in the other her broom drug along on the linoleum floor. The silver-haired girl barely registered the door opening behind her, but it certainly clicked in her head when Gene began yelling.

"Woah! That's a huge sword!" And right _there _was something that she hadn't wanted to hear. Chyrin ducked to the floor and began frantically searching her pockets for the Morph Materia, her Ju-Ju bag nearly going flying as she pulled things from their places and cursed several times in languages that she didn't understand to begin with. The owner of said sword had heard her, though, and turned his head her way.

* * *

"_Bakabakabakabakabaka..._" Cloud raised an eyebrow at the solid string of curses coming from down one of the aisles, looking down the aisle he had just passed and then at the flier in one hand in a quizzical manner. A man came out from the back room, kicking aside boxes and twirling a ring of keys on one finger. His hair was black and he sported a small goatee, probably Costa Del Solian.

"Can I help you? Just got a new shipment of all sorts of stuff in today." Cloud approached the counter, laying the flier down in front of him and flattening it out.

"I know. A girl came by Seventh Heaven today and returned a piece of stolen property. She gave us this, too. You know who that could be?" The twentysomething shopkeep looked a bit flustered, but shrugged and picked the kid that sat on top of several boxes up and sat him on the ground.

"Go play in the back." He said, before taking the flier and looking it over. "Sorry, can't help you. It's only me an' Gene working here. A girl came in here at one point, though... Beanie, magna-sheath armor, old SOLDIER fatigues?"

"That was her." Cloud nodded, and pulled the Buster Sword from his back. After all this he would go put it back where it belonged... But until he got to the bottom of what had happened it stayed in his sights. He laid it gently on the counter. "Did this come in one of today's shipments?" The man behind the counter nodded, giving the ring of keys on his finger one final twirl before stuffing them into his pocket.

"Yeah. That girl you're looking for... She came in just as we cracked open the crate. Started crying and calling us thieves." The shopkeep paused, itching at his goatee. "Personally, I don't blame her. She explained what she could to us... Poor thing looked heartbroken."

"She had silver hair. You let a girl with silver hair walk off with this sword?"

**WHACK!**

Cloud yelped as a white wooden cane thwacked him over the head, the old woman on the other end of it toting a basket full of magical items and Materia. Again the woman smacked him with the cane, but the second time it was on the leg.

"Be ashamed of yourself!" She ranted, shaking the cane in the affronted blond's face. Cloud's eyes were wide as the white wood was nearly shoved up his nose by the aging woman, but stood his ground. "Don't you go judging people by their hair color! I went gray by fifteen, if you'd been around back then would you have gone a-slashin' after me with that great honkin' sword of yours?" Cloud shook his head mutely, leaning backwards to keep the cane out of his face.

"No, ma'am." Even with every ounce of respect he had for the elderly mustered up, the swordsman was still having a hard time not lashing out at the old woman.

"Damn straight." She replied, finally pulling her cane from Cloud's face and setting it on the ground so she could lean on it. "Poor girl brought you back a stolen sword, and y'all go batshit over her hair. All that trouble... If she hadn't brought it back, you'dve never found it." The old woman placed her basket on the counter next to the Buster Sword, and looked at the crates behind the counter with squinted eyes. "New supplier, Zoltar? I thought you liked those kids in Junon." The shopkeeper shrugged, and began removing things from the basket.

"I still do. This whole ordeal has taught me not to switch suppliers." Zoltar paused, his eyebrows furrowing. "Ah... Sir? Your sword?" Cloud looked up from the glass display case that was the front counter, his eyes going from the set of beautiful Ribbons in a dozen different colors to the Buster Sword. He nodded, reaching over and grabbing the handle before swinging it onto his back.

"How much for one of those Ribbons?" The blond asked, pointing to the set. For a moment the old woman almost worried, but the look was quickly replaced with her apparently perpetual annoyance.

"The big silk white one is 40,000 Gil, the thin black one is 27,000 Gil..." Zoltar began rattling off prices, but Cloud stopped him and pointed to a particular one. It was situated between the large white one and three green ones, a medium-sized Ribbon that was a purple so dark it was almost black and frayed at both ends.

"That one." He almost smiled at the look of the Ribbon, and the old woman at the counter grinned in a toothy fashion.

"You're a good kid, you know?" She asked, whacking him once more with the cane. The blond glared, his glowing blue eyes failing to look menacing to the old woman for some reason that he just couldn't fathom. "But leave that girl alone. She brought that sword back to you, which is more than I can say for a lot of people in this city." The woman paused again, bringing a hand to her chin. "More than I can say for a Remnant of Sephiroth, too. That's what you thought she was, right?"

"Something along those lines, yeah." Cloud looked as though he was ready to snap something large in half... Namely something with silver hair and a sword that couldn't fit on a guide book page at an angle. He handed over the Gil for the Ribbon and tied it around his upper arm, a bow foregone in favor of a double-knot.

"Now _there _was a man who looked like a woman. I mean hell, the boy had some sex appeal... But there's only so much respect you can get while showing off a hairless chest. If he'd had some hair on 'im like that Angeal boy... " Cloud couldn't help it, he burst out laughing at the old woman's remark. She began laughing too, her mad cackle quickly tapering down into snerking giggles that both seemed so out of place on an old woman and yet like they were right at home.

"Thank you." The swordsman finally said, smiling at the old woman that had been the first to make him laugh like that in a long while. The old lady smiled and reached over, tousling the blond's spiked hair. Spikes stuck out everywhere when she had finished, and Cloud looked a bit dejected.

"You're perfectly welcome." As Cloud turned to leave, the woman called out to him. "You know, the people call you a hero." The swordsman stiffened, recognition in his eyes as he turned to look at her with one hand on the store's door.

"But you can't be a hero without dreams and honor." He finished, suddenly suspicious of the woman standing at the counter with her basket full of things. "I know."

"Let me finish, let me finish!" The woman shook her cane at him, but still smiled with a face full of deep wrinkles. "They call you a hero, boy... And they're right."

* * *

**Spleeeeeeeeeeeee!**

**Anyone a fan of D.Gray-Man? I only really watch it for Lavi**. **He's just too schway.**

**Oh, and I've got bands on my top molars now. Next Thursday I'm going to have my bottom teeth done. : D My next color combos will be either my Kumoricon colors or gold, black and purple. My current ones are silver, black and teal. Remnant-colored rubber bands FTW!**


	9. Stars and Plates

**The Loveless**

_©®™ Lt. Commander Richie_

**Disclaimer: **_All I own is various insulation foam Squaresoft weapons. Nothing major, just a few keyblades and a giant sitar. No buster swords... Yet. That, however, will change once I make my Angeal cosplay! Pray for mercy, for I shall showeth none! Er... Yeah. You've been warned. And there's another timeskip in this chapter! The Sweeper's back, too!  
_

_Chapter 9_

* * *

The sun, veiled by the city's leftover Mako smog, was setting. The light was dimmer under the Sector Five Plate, however, making everything a seemingly surreal darker shade. Even though it made every shadow darker, there was still a little light. Chyrin looked up at the looming metal structure that was the old ShinRa Plate, and a shiver went down her spine. Just like every other time she had walked under it, she wondered whether or not it would ever fall. With that, of course, came the wonders of what else could really be hidden in the Planet besides the already-vanquished Omega.

Picking her way through the old Marketplace, the teen pulled off her beanie and stuffed it in her back pocket. She really needed to get a better hat... One that definitely wasn't as itchy as this piece of woolen nightmare. Taking a right instead of a left, Chyrin broke into a run as she skirted around broken blocks of cement and demolished buildings. Her feet led her down the path that so many others had already gone down, her own included, and with a vault over the old short chain-link fence around the park the girl was rolling across the sandy ground and looking up at the sky.

The sight of the wall of twisted metal that had once been the Sector Seven Plate was humbling, even upsetting to someone that had seen it fall. Chyrin hadn't... Not really. Sure she had seen it happen on a TV screen in her basement when she had first gotten the game, but when faced with millions of tons of twisted steel and crushed skeletons she had broken down and cried. It hadn't been anything particularly short, either. The silver-haired girl had spent a good thirty minutes sniffling and crying on top of one of the girder-impaled play structures in the park, but after that had quickly gotten over it.

"I'm surprised that Cloud hasn't come by the church yet. I seriously need to find a new place to stay." The sky was turning dark and the stars were beginning to come out, a beautiful sight even though it was through the tragic hole in the Plate that had once been Sector Seven. "Prolly just jinxed it, though." It was true, though. Chyrin and her mother had been extremely lucky in not being found in that church yet... But it was only a matter of time before someone came by, a well-wisher or even a reminiscing member of AVALANCHE. When that happened, they would be out of a place to live and to be quite fair, neither a talking baby nor a silver-haired teenager would be able to get much out of a city like Edge. Not after the errant Summoning of Bahamut SIN and that freakish return of Sephiroth, at least.

The stars were finally all out, some larger than others but all of them so terribly different from what Chyrin grew up with that she couldn't help but feel totally alone. She laid there a while longer, just looking up into the sky... Until a sudden crash from the direction of Don Corneo's old Wall Market made her jump like she had just been bitten. Two high-beams pierced the darkness, destroying the teen's night vision and prompting her to leap to her feet and dive behind one of the larger structures.

"_Shit_." She muttered, peering around under the broken slide of the big beige structure. Out of the street to Wall Market came a Sweeper, the same one that had been rumbling around the Slums since the silver-haired girl had found it. It didn't always shoot at her, probably to conserve bullets, but the threat was still there because of that stupid Smog attack or whatever it was that inflicted Poison damage. The high-beams passed over the park once more, and Chyrin ducked back behind the play structure.

"I seriously need a weapon." The silver-haired girl whispered, ducking low to the ground and staring in the direction of the path to the church. As soon as the high-beams fell onto the wreckage of Sector Seven, Chyrin broke into a run and vaulted herself over the short fence. She landed running, throwing herself around piles of debris and using them as shields. The ping of bullet hitting metal never came, however, and as she rounded the corner that finally brought her into view of the church the teen slowed down. A dim light shone from the hole in the roof, meaning that the triplets were still there and that they had turned on a lamp. For a moment, Chyrin felt a bit guilty about leaving them all day. But it didn't matter in the end, they were there and taking care of her mother instead of out and painting on walls.

The large wooden door creaked as the girl pushed it open, leaning slightly on a hinge. Chyrin smiled at the three kids that all stood up from the water's edge, Ilea holding onto Catherine's hands and making the woman stand on her own clumsy baby feet.

"Look what Catherine learned how to do!" Without warning, the little girl let the baby go. A few muttered curses came from the baby-sized woman with the Chocobo teething ring in her mouth as she stumbled a few times, but she persevered and began taking a few steps. Chyrin snickered a few times at her mother's predicament, closing the door behind her and kneeling down to unzip her boots.

"Finally, now I don't have to push around that cart all the time." Catherine grabbed a lock of her daughter's hair and brought it to her face, sniffing at it in thought. With her other pudgy hand, she drew the teething ring from her mouth.

"You didn't take a shower." The baby deadpanned, glaring at her daughter. A lock of silver-white hair fell down into her face, and she blew it back so it stayed with the rest of her black hair.

"I was busy today. It was really hectic." Chyrin replied, pulling off both boots and standing up. She threw the shoes into the pile of the rest of her clothes and picked up her sleeping bag from one of the pews, stashing it under one of her arms.

"Bye Chyrin!" The triplets ran past the teen and out the door, Helway nearly tripping over his shoelaces several times.

"That's not an excuse. You've gotta take a shower every day or else Zoltar won't want you working when you stink to high heaven." Chyrin sighed and laid her sleeping bag on the floor, picking her mother up and depositing her in the old white flower basket with ribbons and bows all over it.

"There's no heaven here, ma. Just the Lifestream and the Promised Land." Catherine hung onto the edge of the cart, peering over and watching her much larger daughter roll out her sleeping bag and unzip it.

"I wish I could help you honey, I really do." Chyrin sighed and laid down, pulling the sleeping bag up around her and curling up on her side.

"Mm'kay..." The teen and her mother were silent, the silver-haired girl in the sleeping bag moreso than her silently-teething baby-sized mother. She had good reason, though. Her day had been more than stressful in a lot of different ways.

"If you need me, I'm right here." Chyrin didn't answer, though, only curling tighter into her sleeping bag. Catherine sighed and put her teething ring back into her mouth, pulling at the blankets and other soft things the old flower cart had been stuffed with to turn it into a cradle so as to wrap herself up. It was getting colder at night... Pretty soon the two of them would have to find a more permanent residence if they didn't want to freeze to death in the old urban decay that had once been what Chyrin had described as "_The proud two-tiered symbol of greed, corruption and destruction of the Planet... Even if it did have the upper Sector Eight and Loveless._"

* * *

"Heeeeeere Sweeper, Sweeper, Sweeper, Sweeper..." Two months had passed since that faithful stock-day incident, two months of absolutely no growth on Catherine's part and a final move into a little tiny one-bedroom, one-bathroom, one-kitchen-slash-sitting room apartment that just barely fit the two of them. After about three weeks of nothing but growing hair to the point that it didn't fit under her beanie, Chyrin had taken the closest sword she could get her hands on and chopped it all off at shoulder level. It wasn't because it wouldn't fit under the hat... No, she could've just gotten a bigger hat. Nope. Problem was that by the time her hair reached her hips her bangs had started defying gravity in the freakiest manner and the teenager had decided that she looked too much like Sephiroth for her own good. Of course she hadn't given herself bangs so now whenever her hair flopped in her face she looked like Kadaj, but at least her hair all fit under the hat.

In said girl's hand was that beautiful piece of craftsmanship, that wonderful little sword with an automatic Silence effect and an extremely beautiful Tsuba... The double-bladed katana with the purple Tsukamaki and intricate silk knot that had come with the other swords that day. It had also cost her a pretty penny, but a very worth-it pretty penny. After all, Zoltar was teaching her how to use it during the lunch break, and she was getting pretty good. But now wasn't the lunch break. Now was hunting time, and her prey... Well, her prey was out of bullets and extremely elusive.

"C'mere you damn hunk of outdated steel and haywire software, I've got a present for you..." Chyrin peered around a corner, and was greeted with a sight she definitely wanted to see. Just about twenty feet away was the Sweeper that had given her so many problems, its extremely vulnerable backside facing towards her. With a grin the teen hefted her sword out in front of her, and darted out from her hiding place. One strike, two strikes, cut cables of transmission fluid and the glowing green Mako that powered the hulking metal monster went whipping everywhere. A tube of Mako whipped across Chyrin's face, splattering her with the bright glowing substance and getting it in her eyes. The silver-haired girl whipped her arm out and sliced the cables that controlled the right foot of the old ShinRa machine with her sword, severing them completely and making the robot crumple down to the ground.

"Gaaah, _shit._" The teen stumbled backwards, her sword scraping the ground in a limp hand as she wiped furiously at her eyes with her free hand. The Mako burned her eyes like salt water and looking into the sun for way too long, and to be quite fair that hurt like all hell. More Mako made puddles around her feet, and stained her shoes slightly when she stepped in it. With a final wipe all of the glowing green sludge was out, and Chyrin opened her eyes and looked at the Sweeper. Its back end was still leaking Mako and transmission fluid, and with an angry scream the teen took her double-bladed katana and drove it into where all the wires connected. The old ShinRa death machine gave a sudden jerk that wrenched the handle of the sword from Chyrin's hands, and then laid still.

"Dumbass piece of junk..." Her eyes still burning slightly, Chyrin grabbed her sword and pulled it from the machine. Surprisingly, the blades had neither nicks nor bends in them. The girl slid it back into the sheath hanging from the back of her belt, and kicked the metal monster a few times with her stained old SOLDIER boots. "You're lucky my eyes ain't glowing, otherwise I'd take you apart and sell you as car parts."

A sudden beeping came from the teen's pocket, and she gave up kicking the heap of scrap metal for digging down to find what was doing it. Her fingers closed around a thin and flat shape, and with a start she realized that it was her PSP. With a smile, Chyrin drew the piece of technology from her pocket and held it out in front of her. But her smile soon turned into a frown as she realized that it no longer really looked like a PSP. All of her Paopou Fruit keychains still hung from one corner of it, but the screen was larger and the buttons were all gone. On one side was a speaker and the other side was a microphone, and the larger screen was lit up with three reels in it much like... No, no way. Seriously?

"Come _on_... This'd better not be what I think it is." But it was. The three reels were all set on blanked-out and indecipherable shapes, the numbers next to them all mismatched as well. Chyrin sighed and put the PSP, which had now become a DMW, back in her pocket. "Figures. Had to get a Limit Break sooner or later."

* * *

**Don't worry, her Limit Break won't be some kind of omnipotent 'Healing Wind' kinda thing that makes you invincible and rather annoying... No. In fact, I dunno what it'll even be yet. So don't worry. Heck, not even sure who the people in her DMW reel will be.**

**Ooh! And the next chapter introduces a new character! She's awesome-cool in all sorts of ways, but you'll just have to wait and see.**

**And as of yesterday I got my bottom braces on and got my Sephiroth colors switched out for red and black- My Kumoricon colors for this year. Works as a Heartless color scheme for Riku and Demyx, as a Vincent color scheme for Yuffie, and oddly enough as a Rosenkreuz color scheme for Esther. I always knew she was secretly pining for Dietrich...**


	10. Lareth and the Fusion

**The Loveless**

_©®™ Lt. Commander Richie_

**Disclaimer: **_I own FFVII and Sasuke isn't a Mary Sue. A new Sharingan form, seriously? The boy needs to die real soon._

_Chapter 10_

* * *

"Hey Lareth... How's life?" Lareth Kingsley was a rather dark individual. Of course, you could say that about anyone that carried around a gunblade that was basically the same size and weight as themselves without too much trouble and wore several bandoleers of bullets for the thing like a belt. Nevermind that what wasn't metal on her clothes was either mesh or leather or that her eyes were a creepy shade of red that rivaled Vincent Valentine's.

"Life-like." The woman replied, perusing through the selection of high-level Materia that Zoltar's Materia'n'Stuff had on its shelves. It wasn't particularly dangerous stuff... No, that stuff was in the safe with the time lock and carefully documented for sale in a large binder chained to the wall.

"How's the gunblade working for you? You named it yet, or are you just gonna let it be anonymous?" Chyrin idly played with the silk knot on the sword holstered behind her back, smiling wide. Her blindfold was tied around her forehead like a ninja headband, the long ties in the back tied in a bow.

"Zantetsuken." Lareth answered, raising a blue-black eyebrow at the girl behind the counter with the silvery-white hair. The teen chuckled, dropping the silk knot.

"Gesundheit. Oh, and don't touch the Odin Summons for a few minutes." About a month back, Lareth had begun coming in daily. It had begun with buying an old ShinRa-issue gunblade, the same one that had come in the weapons crate with the stolen Buster Sword. Then it had escalated to Materia, items for fusion, and the occasional stuffed and mounted monster.

"Did you ever name your katana?" Lareth asked, pixie-cut blue-black hair swishing around as she turned to look at the girl behind the register. Chyrin pulled the sword halfway from its sheath, running her thumb across the purple Tsukamaki. The Tsuba shone in the fluorescent lights, glinting gold and silver with the occasional flash of an inset stone.

"I'm torn between calling it something sentimentally appeasing to my fangirl side, or calling it 'Kumo' for the hell of it." The sword was carefully thrust back into its sheath, the click it made audible over the buzzing of the lights and the hum of the chest-like refrigerator in the bowels of the store.

"Call it something that reflects what it really is." The phone rang, making the two lone patrons of the store jump. Chyrin grabbed it and nearly dropped it, looking at the caller ID. _833-8399_... That was Laimaida again. The teen brought it to her ear, barely containing a grin.

"Mushi-mushi? Kokontoko Urahara Shōten desu!" Yes, she had terrible grammar and didn't know anything beyond what she had learned on the Internet before coming to Edge, but it wasn't like Lamaida knew that. The reference to the eccentric shopkeeper from Bleach was always an added bonus, too. The woman on the other end spluttered a few times, trying to understand what had been said.

"_Do you speak Common?_" The woman finally asked, and Chyrin had to stop herself from laughing.

"Nani?" She asked, sounding totally serious and yet looking as though she was ready to burst. Lareth chuckled and pulled several items from the shelf in front of her, putting them in her basket with the few pieces of Materia she had already picked out.

"_Nevermind..._" With a final click, the line went dead. Chyrin laughed and put the phone back on its receiver, smiling.

"I swear to freakin' Minerva, I love doing that." Looking over the contents of her basket once more, Lareth sat it down on the glass display case-slash-counter and pulled the large leatherbound Fusion tome that was chained to the wall towards herself.

"Can you combine a Feather Cap and a Super Ribbon?" She asked, itching at a piece of the mesh part of her shirt. "I need something that doesn't make me look like I scalped Cloud Strife and used his hair as a wig, but still increases my Limit Break parameters and nulls all status ailments." Chyrin blinked several times, before looking over at the 'Do Not Disturb – THIS MEANS _YOU_, CHYRIN' sign hung on the door to the back room. Then she laughed, leaning against one of the crates from a recent delivery.

"Oh geez, Lareth... That's rich. I don't know jack-shit about doing Fusions like that! You know that! That'd be like me trying to combine Gurren and Lagann manually without Kamina shouting random words of pseudo-adviii..." The glare sent the silver-haired teen's way was enough for her to shut up and reach for the phone. "I'll get clearance from the WRO if you help."

"Thanks!" While the woman was scary as all hell when glaring, when she smiled it was like nothing could go wrong. Chyrin twitched, but turned the Fusion Tome around and opened it up to the page with the sticky note on it. Taped over a page of _extremely _low-level Fusions was a piece of paper with contact information about high-level spells inside city limits. The teen dialed the WRO number at the top, sending a rather dry expression at the suddenly-curious Lareth that was poking a potted Mandrake shoot.

"_Thank you for calling the WRO main office, this is Esther, how may I direct your call?_" Chyrin snickered a bit at the woman's name and how much she sounded like the nun from Trinity Blood, but quickly composed herself.

"Can you route me through to the..." The teen paused to look at the sheet in the Tome and the instructions on it, before beginning again. "The Inter-City High Level Magic-Usage Clearance Bureau?"

"_Certainly! One moment._" Lareth snickered slightly as she removed the Zantetsuken gunblade from her back so as to crouch down and look at the things in the display case while she waited.

"Mouthful." She said, and fiddled with a loose string on one of the mesh parts of her shirt.

"Shut up." Chyrin muttered, her hand over the receiver as she listened to a really bad instrumental version of a popular song while she waited.

"_Thanks for waiting. What do you need clearance for?_" The man on the other end sounded as though he needed a break. A break, and lots of coffee. And maybe a little less monotone.

"An extremely high-level fusion of a Feather Cap and a Super Ribbon. I'll have help, if that's a defining factor." The man on the other end sighed, as though he got calls like the one Chyrin was making constantly.

"_Shouldn't you be in school?_" He asked, and it was the girl's turn to sigh.

"Listen, bub. I've got a customer here waiting for me to do this fusion, and she's got a freakin' huge gunblade. Unless you want bad things to happen to me, I would suggest giving me clearance." Chyrin paused, and added something as an afterthought. "Please?" There was some clicking on the other end, a few beeps, and the man came back.

"_You're cleared until you finish the Fusion. Then you're back to civilian-level clearance. Thanks for actually getting clearance first._" With that and a click, the connection went dead. Chyrin hung the phone back up and began leafing through the Fusion Tome, watching Lareth out of the corner of her eye.

"If you don't stop poking that, it'll use some kind of Unholy Screech on you or something." A grating scream ripped through the room, and the normally-stoic woman fell backwards muttering curses. "Tolja. Here it is... Really freaking high-level Fusion I shouldn't be attempting without adult supervision."

"What're you waiting for?" Lareth got to her feet and walked over, raising an eyebrow and turning the Tome around. "This shouldn't be too hard."

"Says you. Alright, stick the Super Ribbon in the Feather Cap." The dark-looking woman across the counter did as she was told, and Chyrin continued. "Now get Fusion chalk and draw... Come _on_, why can't they call this Alchemy and get it over with?" The silver-haired teen sighed and opened a drawer, pulling out a piece of white chalk and drawing a swift circle around the Feather Cap and Super Ribbon on the table. In a few more seconds of work, the rest of the circle was filled in with the inane scribblings that the Fusion Tome dictated.

"It's your fault if this blows up in our faces." Lareth showed a bit of a smile, what looked like a pointed tooth showing from between her lips. Chyrin reached out and placed both hands on the edge of the circle, gesturing with her head for the woman across the counter to do the same. The black-haired woman sighed and put her hands on the circle as well, and the teen behind the counter twisted so as to look at the Fusion Tome.

"It shouldn't blow up... Not unless you do something stupid, like sneeze on the circle. Now what do we do next?" Chyrin leaned towards the Tome a bit farther, scanning the page for the activation sequence. One of her fingers smudged a line a bit, but she quickly corrected where her hands were and went back to reading. At the very bottom of the page, she finally found it.

"I don't have all day." Lareth said, upper lip curling into a sneer. Chyrin returned her attention to the circle, matching the dark-looking woman's sneer with a large smile.

"That's okay, we're almost done. Now lesse..." The silver-haired teen looked back at the page for a moment, and then back at the circle. "Altus-campester iunctura numerus viginti tres." She recited, looking confused when nothing happened.

"Is that it?" That was about when everything went wrong. Lareth removed her hands as she talked, and the circle began to glow a bright yellow. Chyrin yelled and grabbed the Fusion Tome, stowing it safely away just as the circle exploded in a huge crack of sound and a large plume of black smoke. The smoke cleared fairly quickly, exposing the mess that had been made. Where the Feather Cap and Super Ribbon had been, a scorched circle marred the wood of the front counter. A huge blast area of soot radiated out in all directions, except for a clear spot in several areas... Namely right behind Chyrin and Lareth. The two opened their eyes, and Chyrin coughed several times. A cloud of black smoke radiated outward from her frame, and Lareth promptly pointed and laughed at her.

"What in Ifrit's name did you _do_?" The door to the back room was thrown open, revealing Zoltar in a sleeping cap with a toothbrush in his hand. Lareth stopped laughing, blinking her red eyes a few times.

"Her fault!" A cloud of soot puffed into the air as Chyrin pointed at the woman across the counter from her, and the teen coughed a few times as she inhaled some. Zoltar put his head in his hands, shaking his head a few times before sitting down on one of the crates behind the counter. A small cloud of soot puffed around him as he did so, but neither of the other two laughed.

"What level was it, and please tell me you got clearance." Chyrin pulled the Fusion Tome out from under the counter, soot drifting from her form every time she moved. Lareth ran her hand through her hair a few times, soot falling from the blue-black pixie-cut in motes.

"The kind of level I shouldn't be attempting without trained professional supervision... And I got clearance?" The silver-haired teen looked sheepish behind the black on her face, and Zoltar groaned loudly and shook his head again.

"Cool." Chyrin and Zoltar both focused their attention on Lareth, who was sifting through the soot and ashes on the counter. Her fingers brushed silver-colored metal, and from the mess that had been created she pulled a medium-sized keychain with three heads, a wing and a tail made of a chain and a blade. The silver-haired teenager that had made the whole mess promptly screamed like the fangirl she was and started jumping up and down while flailing madly. Lareth and Zoltar both looked at her like she was crazy... And at that point, she probably was.

"Stop spazflailing, you little teenaged fantard." The dark-looking woman finally said, turning around a picking up her Zantetsuken from where it had fallen during the blast. She attached the keychain to the handle, and then slung the giant weapon onto her back. "Now, how much do I owe you?"

* * *

**Guess what Lareth got. Go on, guess. I've got one tied around my neck right now.**

**HOLY SWEET JENOVA ON A STICK! I'm so sorry this is two weeks late! I haven't had internet for the past two weeks, I swear!**

**I won't have any time to work on the next chapter over the next two and a half weeks, either. However, when I return I'll have a chapter and more than likely Yuffentine fanservice pictures from the con! Just you wait!**


	11. Mako Eyes

**The Loveless**

_©®™ Lt. Commander Richie_

**Disclaimer: **_WOAH late. Sorry about that.  
_

_Chapter 11

* * *

  
_

"Not friggin' fair." Chyrin was up to her elbows in soapy water, her pants rolled up to her knees and her hair all pushed up under her beanie. With a splash she pulled her brush from the bucket, and once again scrubbed at the black soot on the floor. "Fifty thousand Gil for a friggin' Cerberus. I wanna do anything in this stinking world I gotta master a bunch of freaking All Materia!"

"Less talky, more worky." Gene sat on top of one of the crates behind the counter, his portable TV sitting on his knees as he watched the silver-haired teen scrub away the mess she and Lareth had made.

"Oh shut up you little demon child." With a harrumph and renewed gusto, Chyrin scrubbed at a particularly stubborn black spot on the floor. Suds went everywhere and the occasional bubble popped up into the air around the silver-haired girl, but she kept scrubbing. Eventually the spot was clean, and she continued on to the next area. She slowly made her way across the floor, leaving a trail of clean linoleum behind her. She kept working until her fingers were wrinkled and her shoes and pants legs were soaked through to leave her all kinds of soggy and still somewhat soot-covered.

"Hey slave-girl!" Chyrin's head shot up at the taunt, and she whacked it on the bottom of a shelf of low-level Materia. The shelf promptly fell off its pegs in the metal unit, and all the Materia went bouncing everywhere. Small sparks of green from Cure One and little patches of ice from Ice One shot everywhere, and the silver-haired teen cursed loudly and in rapid succession as she scrambled to pick every one of the spheres up off the floor. With a sudden scream she slipped in the water and soap on the floor, and what Materia she had already picked up bounced away merrily.

"Clean up in aisle five!" Gene yelled, before pointing and laughing at the girl in front of him. Chyrin screamed several curses, and picked herself up off the floor. Her shirt and pants were soaked through, and she was covered in soap.

"So help me Leviathan, if you don't shut up and start running I'm getting my sword and going after you. It's got Silence, so nobody will hear you scream." Chyrin wrung the water from her shirt, glaring at the misshapen stretched part of her old sleeveless SOLDIER sweater. Gene blew a raspberry at her, and with an angry cry the teen leaned down and grabbed a sphere of Materia to fling at the boy. The little green sphere began to glow the warm reddish orange of a Fire One, but someone grabbed her hand. The Materia was pulled from her grip and powered down, and Gene whimpered once before scrambling away.

"Do you want to get fired?" Zoltar asked, crossing his arms. Chyrin bit down a growl and tried not to sneer, wringing soapy water out of her pants. She didn't turn towards her employer, though, and instead wrung out her beanie. "Because if you had done that I would have had to."

"No. I don't." The teen muttered, putting her hat back on before sinking to her hands and knees and beginning the arduous task of picking up all the scattered Materia. She had a good fifteen of them all picked up before Zoltar finally crouched down next to her and dropped the low-level Fire she had almost thrown in front of her.

"Don't let your anger get the best of you. You brought it upon yourself." Chyrin let out a small chuckle as she picked up the Fire One and set it with the rest of the Materia that had gone everywhere. The two were quiet until Zoltar stood up, taking the fallen shelf in both hands and setting it back on its pegs. He turned to go back to the front counter, but then paused.

"What?" Chyrin asked, taking handfuls of Materia and putting them back onto the shelf. Zoltar turned back to her, raising an eyebrow before looking around again.

"Do you hear beeping?" He asked, unsure. The silver-haired teen sighed and wiped her hands on her pants before digging her hand into her pocket and pulling out her DMW. The reels were mismatched, but the numbers were all matched; three fours blinking across the screen.

"Hey, cool, no magic cost until the end of the battle." The shopkeep raised his other eyebrow, and took the little electronic device from the teen.

"Where'd you get this?" He asked, flipping it over to look for a manufacturing number or company logo. "Only Limit Break-capable people can get these. Never mind that they're expensive as hell to buy and even more expensive to calibrate." Chyrin shrugged, and began organizing the Materia on the shelf.

"It used to be a game system that I had in my pocket. Something tells me that if I'd had God of War or something in it it wouldn't be a DMW now." Fire first, then Ice, then Cure, then Transform... "Hey, how do I figure out who's in it?" Zoltar tapped the screen a few times, and the beeping stopped. Another few taps, and he turned it around to show the silver-haired girl. Fifteen blue boxes with blacked-out images and question marks confronted her, and she smiled and grabbed it from her employer.

"Recognize anything?" He asked jokingly, turning to go towards the front. Behind him, Chyrin grinned and nodded. In the first column she saw Zoltar and Lareth, as well as a shape she didn't recognize. But the last two she blinked several times and then rolled her eyes.

"Figures." She muttered, shoving the piece of expensive technology back in her pocket. "I'm a friggin' "Girl falls into the fandom" Mary Sue. Why wouldn't I end up involved with them?"

"What was that?" Zoltar asked, looking up from where he was browsing a stock catalog.

"Nothing!" Chyrin assured, and continued her work. Once all the Materia were back on the shelf in their correct spots the teen went back to scrubbing at the soot on the floor. It was almost done by the time that anything particularly new happened, and even then it was only the phone ringing.

"Zoltar's Materia'n'stuff, this is Zoltar. How can I help you?" The shopkeep paused to listen before speaking again. "Yeah, we got one of those. It's not mastered, but we do have it." He paused again, and then went to the register. "Alright, what's the number on that?" Zoltar held the phone between his shoulder and ear, and keyed something in. "And the expiration date on that?" Again he keyed something in, and Chyrin finally got up and dropped her brush in her bucket, finished. "And the name on that? Really? You wouldn't happen to be the same- oh, cool."

Chyrin had a bad feeling about this sale, she seriously did. The caller seemed important, and the teen was betting she would have to make a delivery. And a delivery meant that she had to go very far for a very long time. Well, at least she'd get paid.

* * *

"Are you alright?" Chyrin looked up from where she was rubbing her eyes, and met the concerned gaze of a young girl in a pink dress and holding a basket full of flowers. The teen smiled and nodded, before pushing past the kid and resuming her rubbing. But the girl was persistent, and grabbed onto the sheath of her double-bladed katana. "Your eyes were all red! Were you crying?"

"No, kid. Now bugger off, I've got a delivery to make." Looking around through puffy red eyes, the teen realized that she couldn't see much farther than about her hand in front of her face. She rubbed at her eyes again, but that only made it worse.

"What're you delivering? Where is it going?" The little girl asked, and Chyrin closed her eyes and felt around for the bus stop bench she could have sworn she was standing near. The girl grabbed her hand and pulled her carefully to the bench, laughing all the way.

"I'm delivering a really dangerous piece of Materia to a traveling doctor who lives in an apartment building somewhere on this street." Chyrin opened her eyes and strained to see through the haze of inflammation, but to her all the buildings looked the same. "Why, you planning on mugging me and destroying the city?" The teen paused for a moment, then shook her head. She put a hand over her face, and the handcuff that attached her other wrist to the metal case with the Materia in it jingled a bit as she did so. "Gad, what the hell is wrong with my eyes?"

"What are you delivering, a Mastered Ultima?" The girl asked, sounding serious. "My daddy says that only people that know what they're doin' should carry those around." Chyrin laughed and shook her head, but then rubbed at her eyes again.

"No, but your dad sounds like he knows his stuff. I've got a single-star Knights of the Round in this thing." The teen paused and looked down at her hands... She could hardly even see them. "_Shit_. Hey, kid. Do my eyes look bad to you?"

The little girl very carefully used her hands to keep one of the teen's eyes open, and leaned in close. She made a face at the large red veins and the slight green tint to the delivery girl's eyes, but it was the sudden realization that the green spots were _glowing _that made the little girl suddenly grab Chyrin's hand and tug her from the bench and towards an apartment building at the end of the street.

"Where are we going? I got something I need to do!" Chyrin protested, trying to pull her hand away from the surprisingly strong grip the girl had.

"I gotta take you to Dr. Kreshent, you've got Mako in your eyes! He'll be able to get it out!" The little girl in pink nearly flung Chyrin into a stairwell wall as she went around a corner heading up to the second landing, and the teen stumbled several times on the stairs before she got the hang of it. Under the little girl's helpful tutelage, the teen soon stood before the apartment door of one Dr. Richard Kreshent. Oddly enough, Dr. Kreshent was the person that had bought the summon currently in the case dangling from Chyrin's slightly-limp fingers.

"Dr. Kreshent?" The girl knocked several times on the apartment door, and on the fifth knock a rumpled-looking young redhead answered the door. From the looks of him, you would have never guessed he was a doctor. After all, what kind of doctor wore hoop earrings?

"Whaddya wan'?" The doctor looked as though he had just woken up, and he had something red staining a lot of his neck and cheeks. Even with her eyes swollen and irritated, Chyrin could tell that it was lipstick.

"Dr. Kreshent, she's got Mako in her eyes!" The girl said, and all sleep was immediately gone from the doctor. He ushered them in, carefully righting a tipped over lamp on a table in the hall and discreetly kicking an old shirt with several missing buttons under the coffee table.

"How'd that happen?" The redhead asked, going to the kitchen and pulling out a medical kit.

"I snuck up behind an old ShinRa Sweeper and cut the cables in back to kill it. I got some of the old machinery Mako in my eyes, but I didn't really think it would get to me until it started burning just a little while ago." Chyrin replied, setting her briefcase on the coffee table and sitting down on the couch. "I also have a delivery for you, the Knights of the Round you bought from Zoltar's Materia'n'Stuff."

"Oh, good. Set it aside for a sec and I'll get your eyes washed out." Dr. Kreshent sat down and began mixing a few things with one hand, wiping at his cheeks and neck with a wet washcloth with the other hand. "Why were you fighting a Sweeper? I get that kids these days want to be adventurers and heroes like AVALANCHE, but those things can really hurt you."

"Personal vendetta." Chyrin rubbed at her eyes again, watching the large pink blur that was the girl that had brought her to the doctor take what she assumed was a few flowers from her basket and put them on the table. "The Sweeper got me into a nasty spot a few months back and now I have a stalker that thinks I'm a teenage drug-addicted mother living in what used to be the Slums."

"Do you?" Dr. Kreshent asked, setting down his washcloth and bringing a dropper bottle of a solution to the couch.

"Do I what?" Chyrin asked, sitting up from her slouch as the doctor put a hand to her face and opened her right eye.

"Live in the old Slums with an illegitimate child and do drugs." Her eye getting dry, Chyrin blinked hard, and the drop of solution that had been meant for her eye hit her eyelid and rolled away.

"No. I actually live in the Magic district over on West End. It was a good deal, I'm only about six blocks from wor- _SWEET SPAWN OF SEPHIROTH_!" Dr. Kreshent managed to get a drop of the solution into her eye, and Chyrin screamed. She grasped at her eye, swearing loudly. The girl in pink, sitting in a chair across the room to watch, put her hands over her ears but looked somewhat nervous. "You could have told me it was going to hurt like Minerva just fucking _gored _me!"

"There are children present." The redheaded doctor deadpanned, still holding the dropper in one hand. Chyrin stifled her curses, fisting her hands in her beanie and opening her eyes. Her newly-cleaned eye was a little red still, but the fluid had done its job. The white of that eye was no longer mottled with green and angry red veins, but instead her normally brown eye shone a dull Mako green. Dr. Kreshent took hold of the other side of her face, opening her other eye with two fingers before dropping two drops in.

"_Mother-_," Chyrin stopped herself from completing the sentence, pulling at her beanie with white knuckles. At the back of her head, a shock of silver hair tugged itself free from her hat and contrasted against her old black SOLDIER sweater. The little girl in pink finally took her basket of flowers and ran to the door, quiet as she did so. The silver-haired teen finally let her hat go, and more hair fell from it. She shoved it back down from where she had pulled it up, and wiped the wetness from around her eyes. From beside her, the teen drew the metal briefcase with the Knights of the Round.

"Thanks for getting that stuff outta my eyes!" She said, smiling at Dr. Kreshent as he sat down on the Ottoman across the coffee table from her. The metal case was set between them, and she drew the keys from the chain around her neck and unlocked it. From the case she took the small but beautiful lump of Materia, and handed it over before closing the case and latching it. "Due to WRO code 37A subsection 9, because of the power level that Summon isn't allowed to be invoked within five miles of the outer limits of any large city unless in dire emergency."

"I know the rule," said the redheaded doctor, as he stashed the Materia on his person and got up to put the eye wash solution away. "Thanks for delivering, I would have had to get it myself otherwise.

"Not a problem, it's a big and crowded city. Delivery people are the only way to get anything anywhere on time anymore." Chyrin paused, and then dug frantically in one of her deep back pockets. From it she drew a folded-up piece of paper, and handed it over. "That's a coupon, it's good for 20 percent off any in-store purchase, and comes with any Summon bought from our store. It's got the store address and everything, and is good until the end of next year."

The two shook hands, and Chyrin headed for the door. She had her hand on the handle when Dr. Kreshent was behind her, a hand on her shoulder. "Be careful about looking people in the eyes for about a week, okay?" He warned, and Chyrin blinked uncertainly.

"Er-" She began, opening the door to the apartment.

"Mako, especially processed Mako, is really easily absorbed by the iris of the eye. Your eyes right now and for about a week will be a glowing green color. It wears off, though, so no worries!" The harmless smile the doctor gave made Chyrin smile as well as she stepped onto the landing outside the apartment.

"Richie?" A sleepy voice asked from inside the apartment, and Dr. Kreshent's eyes went wide before he grinned. "Richie, who's there?"

"Just a delivery girl, Lindsey, I'll be there in a second!" Chyrin laughed, and waved goodbye to the doctor as he closed the door quickly. The silver-haired delivery girl made her way quietly to the stairwell at the end of the apartment complex, humming a Wutain rock song she had become attached to as she went. At the first floor, three apartments down the landing, the little girl in pink was standing outside the door trying to drag someone out.

"C'mon, girl, you know we got rid'o them! You ain't got a thing t'worry 'bout." But the girl still pulled, and Chyrin watched in curiosity. The girl was a bit far away, and her eyes were still just a little blurry, but the teen could have _sworn _she'd seen the girl somewhere before.

"But daddy! Cloud said there was a girl with silver hair a while back that gave back his Buster Sword! Maybe it's her!" …_Oh sweet godly Mother Jenova_. The little girl was Marlene. Chyrin took a step towards the staircase leading to the ground floor and parking lot, but the floor under her foot creaked loudly. Marlene spun around to look at her, and then began pulling harder at the arm of her father. "Daddy, she's here! Right there! Look!"

"Oh shit." Chyrin swore, just as the gruff face of Barret Wallace looked down the landing straight at her. Both of them looked a bit like deer in the headlights for a second, before Chyrin reached behind her and Barret came out onto the landing with his gun-arm at the ready.

The silence and tension were so thick they could be cut with a knife.

"I'm not gonna hurt anybody. I'm just a delivery girl." Chyrin's hand found the purple handle of her double-bladed katana, and she gripped it tightly as she made her way ever-so-slowly towards the stairs.

"What's in th' case, kid?" The AVALANCHE member asked, and the teen smiled.

"There used to be a Knights of the Round. I already delivered it, though." That's when something that definitely should not have happened, happened. Chyrin's bangs flopped themselves free of her beanie, hanging in her face like a silver curtain. Barret swore loudly and his metal hand unfolded outward into a large gun, and Chyrin made a sound much like a squeak and her sword was drawn from the sheath hanging at her back and held in a guarding position in a backwards grip out in front of her. The first few bullets came, and she swiped at them just fast enough to evade or make them ricochet from her blades. Being fired at by a Sweeper had advantages.

"I don't want to hurt anyone! Why are you shooting?!" Chyrin promptly leaned backwards and toppled down the stairs towards the ground floor. At the first landing of the staircase she righted herself and took the stairs three at a time, booking it across the parking lot with bullets making pavement fly behind her feet. As she made it around a corner, cement and brick dust flew from the side of the building.

This was not one of those good things.

* * *

**WOO CHAPTER! **

**So Barret's seen Chyrin, Cloud's seen Chyrin, someone else is totally next.**

**Yes, Dr. Richard Kreshent and his girlfriend Lindsey are kinda based on Lavi and Lenalee from DGM. This is okay, though! It has plot basis.**

**Sorry about not uploading for a while, I'll get right on that next chapter.  
**


	12. Developing Trouble And Solutions

**The Loveless**

_Lt. Commander Richie_

**Disclaimer: **If I owned Final Fantasy VII, do you really think you'd be on here reading this? No, you'd be too busy squealing your brains out over a re-release of FFVII. But I'm not Nomura (or Katsura Hoshino, but that's an inside joke), so you'll just have to live with this. Oh, and if anything confuses you as to my disclaimer or anything I write, take it up with the influence of /b/.

Chapter 12

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"A'ight, everyone clear out! Official AVALANCHE business!" Seventh Heaven had been peaceful that day before Barret came storming in. Marlene was on his shoulders, holding on to his cornrows like handles in an effort to keep from falling off as her father ran inside the bar.

"You heard him, boys. Bar's closed." Behind the counter, Tifa pulled out the gloves. What few patrons were left from Barret's initial entrance picked up their coats and left, draining glasses in single gulps and leaving them on their tables. With a smile, the motherly bartender came across the room and picked Marlene from her father's shoulders before flipping the sign on the door to 'Closed'.

"What's so pressing that you had to clear out my bar, Barret?" Tifa sat Marlene down on the ground, adjusting the girl's bow so that it looked more like a bow and less like a sloppy knot.

"You 'member that girl tha' brought Spiky back his old sword when someone took it?" Barret made himself at home on a bar stool, leaning back on the bar. "Well I saw 'er today. My Marlene said she said somethin' about Sephiroth and 'Mother'."

"That true, honey?" Marlene nodded to Tifa, unsure. The little girl suddenly put a hand in a fist, as though remembering something.

"She also said something about a Minerva!" Tifa's eyebrows furrowed, but she said nothing. Wordlessly she straightened up to her full height and pulled her phone from her pocket, hitting the speed dial for Cloud's number. If he didn't pick up she'd go hunt him down herself.

_Hello? _Cloud sounded tired… Three days on a motorcycle could really do that to you.

"That girl showed up again." Tifa crossed her free arm under her bust and leaned against a table, looking up towards the ceiling fans as she talked. "Barret said she said something about 'Mother'." The pause that followed was long enough that the bartender wondered if Cloud had simply hung up.

_Did she say anything else? _The blond on the other end of the line spoke firmly and clearly, and in the background the brunette could hear his Fenrir roaring to life.

"Something about Sephiroth, from what I've gathered. A Minerva character too, but I've never heard of her." Tifa paused, waiting for him to hang up without another word. "Cloud… Are you alright?"

_I'm coming home. Call Reeve, Vincent and Yuffie; until I get there they can come up with a plan to figure out who she is. _Fenrir revved, the low rumble a beautiful mechanical sound that reverberated around what sounded like a canyon. _And I'll be alright. You try and figure the girl out, I'll see you all when I get back. I should be back in about two days. _With that, the connection was cut. Tifa closed her phone and looked down at Marlene, who was holding out a cookie to her.

"Daddy doesn't want it." She said simply, and the brunette took the offering. "Is Cloud coming back?" Tifa nodded, and slid her phone back into her pocket.

"Why don't you go get me the house phone, I have a few people to call." With a smile, Marlene ran towards the kitchen.

* * *

It was with a cautious glance over both shoulders that Chyrin opened the door to Zoltar's Materia'n'Stuff and walked in. She waved to her employer and then sat the case down on the counter, fishing the keys from around her neck to get the handcuff off her wrist.

"Is it _really _a WRO law that people making deliveries of class-five or higher Materia have to handcuff the case to themselves?" She asked, pulling her beanie off and stuffing it in a pocket before popping one end of the cuffs open and then stashing the whole ensemble under the counter.

"You got a problem with it; take it up with their President." Zoltar was just finishing shifting through a package of ribbons, sorting them by color and material. As he went he stamped a price sticker onto one end of each.

"Reeve Tuesti has better things to do than listen to a teenage girl that works at a magical items-based thrift store." Chyrin pulled her apron on and took the Morph Materia from its hiding place, placing it carefully in the larger front pocket of the dark green work uniform.

"I'onno, that guy listens to pretty much everyone. I bet if you asked nicely he'd listen." His labeling and sorting finished, the shopkeeper scooped the ribbons up into both hands and then wrapped a rubber band around the bundle. Seeing the ribbons made Chyrin think back…

"That white ribbon, the really thick one that had a bit of a blue tint to it? Did we sell it yet?" Zoltar peered down through the scratched glass of the display case-slash-counter, his eyes falling onto a long white ribbon that shone with the slightest of blue.

"Nope. Hey, while you were gone a couple kids ran in here and knocked some stuff over down aisle six. You think you could clean it up?" Chyrin nodded, and walked towards the supply closet.

"What got broken?" She asked, pulling out a mop, broom and dustpan. Aisle six was notorious for strangely-shaped potion bottles that could never seem to balance on a center of gravity, and therefore whenever someone ran down an aisle or jumped they would fall over. Most of the time they were pretty resilient, but the more rambunctious the kids the more likely it was that there'd be potion on the floor.

"One of the automatic injection potion syringes got knocked down and then stepped on." Chyrin peered down the aisle, and her radioactive-green eyes narrowed at the sticky mess of bright blue potion and glass staining the white linoleum. That shouldn't be coagulating if it was fresh…

"How long ago was this?" She asked, dragging the mop bucket down the aisle behind her as she made sure not to knock anything over with the mop handle.

"Just about right after you left." The silver-haired teen rolled her eyes and dunked the mop into the bucket, then sloshed it onto the floor. Water made spots in the blue goo, but the mop managed to stick in a spot full of glass.

"And you left it? You're such a lazy bum, Zoltar." Chyrin stuck her tongue out at her grinning boss, and wrenched the mop from the sticky blue mess. She shoved at it again with the mop and managed to scrape part of it off the floor, but the rest stayed. At least a lot of glass came up stuck in the part she had pulled away.

"I was busy." Zoltar shrugged as he talked, sitting down in a swivel chair he must have brought from the back office.

"Busy sleeping?" Chyrin bent down and hooked her fingernails under one edge of the blue rubbery substance and pulled. It slowly came up, leaving a light blue stain on the white linoleum. "C'mon, man, seriously? You know as well as I do these things coagulate when left in contact with open air!"

"I was in contact with a local lawyer, actually." Chyrin looked up down the aisle at her boss, confusion in her glowing eyes. "Filed for a restraining order against Lamaida." The silver-haired teen grinned and got up, throwing the slab of blue goo into the mop bucket to be thrown out with the dirty water.

"Zoltar, I could kiss you. When does it go through? How far away from me does she have to stay?" Zoltar held up a hand, and the teen shut up.

"It's for the both of us. At all times she can't come within a hundred yards of us, the shop or our homes. She's taken to stalking me too." Both of them made a face, and Chyrin went back to peeling at the dried Potion.

"So what're we gonna do to get it to come to her attention?" The silver-haired girl peeled up another slab of blue gunk and dropped it in the water, it made a sound not unlike a fish.

"I was planning on photocopying it and taping a copy on my apartment door, on the inside of the door here and giving you a copy to put on your own door." The glass front door of the store was probably the best place, since Lamaida did frequent there.

"Cool. When'll it get cleared?" At this, Zoltar's face fell. He sighed and leaned an elbow on the counter, then leaned his chin on his hand.

"That's the problem. To enforce it, I've gotta get a picture of you, me and her to the WRO along with a copy of the unsigned restraining order. The order has to be signed there by their head of public safety. Problem is that I don't have a camera, you've got silver hair, and Lamaida's not about to come with us to the WRO." Chyrin groaned and pulled up the last of the dried potion, then plopped it in the mop bucket.

"I can't wear the beanie in there, they'll ask me to take it off for a photo; there's no way in hell Lamaida comes within twenty feet of me, and…" The silver-haired teen trailed off, and then grinned. "I need a wig! I can afford a couple of really good ones, where's the nearest wig store?"

"Down in the next Shopping District over… Fifteen blocks from here. You can go after closing time, 'kay?" Chyrin nodded quickly, then picked up the mop bucket and headed for the back door between the tall freezers full of perishable magical items. First, she would dump out the grody three-day-old water and the bits of dried potion in it. After that, she'd do inventory. Then, once her work day was done and over with, she'd book it to the wig store. Wig store wig store wig store, that hadn't been something she'd gone to since before she'd come to Edge!

* * *

Chyrin's apartment complex, while large, was unusually quiet. It was usually noisy on a weekday at eight thirty at night, but the place was almost eerie in its silence. In two hands, Chyrin held a large canvas bag with three brown wigs that matched her original hair color, two cans of the strongest hairspray she could find, two wig heads, several sets of styling scissors, a very long and beautiful normal white ribbon, a nice comb and a tube of industrial-strength caulking.

Silently, the teen stared down the dark green door with 42B on it in gold letters. Her keys were in her pocket with her DMW. Setting the bag down meant backing down.

Chyrin shifted the bag to one hip and dug in her pocket, the silence of the apartment complex around her making her shift nervously from foot to foot. The key she flipped to was only one of four, the others being a few keys she had found around the apartment and on the street in an effort to thwart any people that might try to break in. Not that there was anything to steal.

"Ma, I'm home!" The door slammed shut behind the teen, and she latched it with her free hand. "And I finally gave in to my inner cosplayer and got a few wigs!" But the apartment was quiet. Chyrin shrugged and sat her bag down on the counter, then pulled out the wig heads from her bag. She sat them on the counter next to each other, followed by the hairspray, caulking, comb, three pairs of scissors and then the three wigs in a perfectly straight line. With a flourish of unrestrained glee, the teen flipped up the lights in the living room-slash-kitchen. Her baby-sized mother was asleep on the couch, a pudgy hand clenched around the TV remote.

"Eh, whatever." With an unrestrained grin, Chyrin ripped off her beanie and chucked it across the room before grabbing an old issue of the Edge Chronicle and setting about laying the newspaper everywhere on the floor. Once that was done, she opened the packaging of her wigs and pulled all three out. They were gorgeous and high-quality, and with just the right amount of styling nobody would be able to tell that it wasn't her real hair.

It was going to be a long night.

* * *

**And once again, my inner cosplayer gets the best of me.**

**Next chapter introduces a few more OCs, though only one of them will continue to have a big part in the story. Chapter after that Chyrin meets someone she doesn't really expect, and eventually someone she really had no intention of ever meeting for fear that she would spaz out too much.**

**Until next time, then?  
**


	13. Eil Allern

**The Loveless**

_Lt. Commander Richie_

**Disclaimer: **Yeah, sure. No. not on your ever-loving life. I do have an L shirt, though. An L shirt and an unquenchable love for L/OC fiction. It's like crack, I tell you! Really, really bad crack! Like, not even funny crack!

**You get this chapter because it's Christmas (and because it's due today)! And you all deserve a Christmas gift. Now all _I_ expect in return is Reviews for Christmas. That so much to ask?**

_Chapter 13

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_

The next day revealed a tired Chyrin lying on the kitchen floor, a pair of thinning shears still on her fingers. Her eyes were closed, and she was snoring gently. On the counter were two finished wigs and the remnants of the third, only the wig cap remaining as it had been taken apart for its wefts. The first was simple, a mid-back muddy brown with no bangs or special trimming. The only thing that had been done to it was a hairline carefully created. The second was a masterpiece, in Chyrin's opinion. True to Square-Enix style, the bangs floated precariously but in a natural fashion and the large high ponytail wrapped with the white ribbon was a perfect example of wig craftsmanship. In fact, the hairspray the teen had used didn't even show.

At some point during the night Chyrin had decided that this was probably what Cloud Strife used to keep his hair in crazy spikes like that.

A small shadow cast itself over the sleeping form of the teen. The black-haired baby with the white streak in her hair looked at the digital clock on the microwave, then at the girl in front of her. She sniffed. With a baby foot, she kicked.

"Up, Chyrin." Catherine ordered, kicking her daughter in the shin again. The girl started awake, waving the scissors on her hand in a mad attempt to get them off. After a second, she realized that they were only scissors and relaxed.

"Yeah ma? Apartment isn't burning down, is it?" The baby glared as well as a baby could, and pointed with a pudgy finger to the bathroom at the end of the very short hall to the bedroom.

"Take a shower. You're due at work in thirty minutes." Chyrin bolted to her feet and promptly slipped on a wig hair-covered piece of newspaper. She unzipped her boots from her spot on the floor and then ran to the bathroom in a mad rush of clothes being dropped to the floor. The water turned on a moment later, followed by a yelp as the teen in the bathroom realized she hadn't taken off her socks before she jumped in the shower. A pair of wet socks hit the wall across from the bathroom door and slid down with a wet squelch.

Five minutes later, Chyrin ran out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel and into the bedroom, where the closet was thrown open rather forcefully. The towel went flying out into the hall, and all was quiet for a moment. Catherine watched from her spot on the couch in front of the TV, where she had perched herself. Chyrin ran back out several minutes later, wearing a dark purple high-collared zip-up sleeveless sweater and a pair of black SOLDIER uniform pants with an attached half-skirt that served no other purpose than to be aesthetically appealing. Her sword was attached to the back of her belt by a few straps, and the Auto Silence bead hanging from the handle clinked against the Tsuba with every step she took. She reached into an open drawer in the kitchen counter and pulled out a rubber band, pulling all of her short silver hair to the back of her head and fastening it with a few deft loops. In a nearly-professional flip she was wearing the long mud-brown wig that had remained relatively unstyled, and she finger-combed it a few times before checking her reflection in the microwave door.

"I look normal, right?" The teen asked, and her mother shrugged.

"You're asking the talking baby?" Chyrin shrugged, and Catherine sighed in her baby way. "You look fine, hon. Just go to work. Oh! And stop by the store on your way home, would you? We ran out of milk and cereal yesterday." The teen nodded, and made her way to the door of the apartment before she realized that she wasn't wearing any shoes. She laughed, and slid into her old SOLDIER boots before zipping them up and then heading out the door. It locked behind her, and she was on her way.

Chyrin was halfway down the staircase that spanned the entire right side of the building and connected all the floors when she realized that she looked like a Cloud Strife-wannabe. It was too late to go back and change, though, so she continued on her way. The teen burst out the door at the bottom of the complex stairwell at a run, continuing her pace down the street towards Zoltar's. It felt good to have the pull of long hair behind her again!

Dodging between people and objects, Chyrin made her way down the street towards the small Magic-based shopping area that Zoltar's Materia'n'Stuff was located in. On one side of the shop was a spellworker's, who specialized in voodoo stuff like you'd find in Mideel. On the other side of Zoltar's was a Materia repair shop. The one next to Zoltar's was actually one of the only ones with a permit to operate in Edge because Materia repair involved having a tap into the Lifestream. It was run by a wizened old man and his wife, both of whom had been doing what they did for almost fifty years in various parts of the world.

Ducking into the shopping area, which was pretty deserted due to the early hour, Chyrin made a break for the front door of Zoltar's. Gene had his face pressed to the glass door out front, and he was making funny faces at her through it. When he realized that she wasn't slowing down, though, the kid jumped back and ran behind the counter. Chyrin ran in with a jingle of the front door and weaved through the gap in the front counter only to nearly trip over a series of delivery boxes. She managed to barely keep her balance, though, and made it to the time clock to punch in about five minutes before she was due in.

"Delivery day!" She cheered, grabbing her apron from its hook and tying it on. Despite the fiasco months before, delivery day was still Chyrin's favorite day of the week. The best part about this week though was that they were getting a big order of Materia-based Wutain weapons!

"You got the crowbar?" Zoltar peeked out from his office, a grin decorating his features. Chyrin grabbed the object in question from its place on a small shelf on the wall, and held it like a child would a stuffed animal.

"That I does." Chyrin smiled widely, and at her boss' nod she grabbed the first box marked 'Weapons' and sat it on the counter. The crowbar was inserted and heaved upon once on each edge of the top of the box, and with a creak it popped open. The girl was about to pull the loose lid off and look inside when she felt someone playing with her wig. It was faint, but she could feel a slight tug. She blinked once, twice, and then turned around. Gene was playing with the ends of her brown wig.

"How'd your hair grow and change color?" He asked, and Chyrin grinned.

"It's a wig, so people can't see my silver hair. I dunno why I didn't think of it sooner, I used to have a huge collection of them. You wanna let me do my job so I can get paid?" Gene nodded, and went back to his spot on one of the old crates used mostly for seating so as to watch his early-morning cartoons. Chyrin turned her attention back to the box in front of her, and she pulled the lid off and removed packing grass to see a veritable pool of small sharp shiny objects. The entire box was comprised of kunai, shuriken, trench knives and other ninja weapons, all of them with at least one Materia slot. She sat the box aside for organization later, and marked it 'Small, sharp and shiny. **DO NOT TOUCH!**' on the replaced lid.

The next box was larger and flat, and it took quite a bit longer for Chyrin to get the top off of it. Once it was off, however, the insides displayed were a gorgeous example of Wutain workmanship. A series of fuuma-shuriken were pulled out, one from on top of the other, each given a temporary place against the wall. They all had massive amounts of Materia slots, both linked and unlinked. Once the delivery crate was disposed of, Chyrin raised her eyebrows at the long box leaning against the wall.

"Zoltar, what's in the box taller than me?" The shopkeeper looked up from where he was marking the Knights of the Round Materia as sold in the dangerous items catalogue and adding a few high-level Summons that had just been delivered, and furrowed his brow.

"Not too sure. Pop it open, it's probably a couple glaives." The silver-haired girl did just that, wrenching one end of the case open and pulling out some packing grass. She was met with the sharp ends of two glaives, and gently she grabbed the flat sides of one blade and began pulling the weapon from the box. Down the handle there were a total of thirteen Materia slots, six of which were linked. These things were possibly the most epic weapons she had ever encountered. They had more slots than AVALANCHE's ultimate weapons!

Carefully, the teen laid the glaive against the wall and then pulled the other one out. The large tufts of animal hair that adorned each were both bright, vibrant colors that stood out against the cement wall of the store. Chyrin pulled more packing grass from the long box, hoping to find a third glaive. Instead, though, her fingers only met a black-lacquered cylinder. With a tilt of her head she carefully pulled it out. But it still kept coming. The girl's eyes widened as she realized what it was, and with a yank the eight-foot-long katana was out of the box and the box was on the ground. For a moment, the girl wanted to scream. Then she quelled the urge and realized that the Tsukamaki of the handle she held was a bright and vibrant seafoam green and the Tsuba of the katana had a shell motif.

"This is the most amazing thing I've ever seen." With extreme care, the sword was placed with two hands on the crates piled behind the counter.

"It's called Akihiro." Chyrin whipped around to see Zoltar holding an unfolded piece of paper. "Forged several hundred years ago by one of Wutai's greatest swordsmiths." They both blinked, taking in what had been said.

"Is this our box?" They asked simultaneously. Chyrin flipped the long box over, and sure enough the address for Zoltar's Materia'n'Stuff was there. Just as the girl sat the box back down and grabbed the glaives to go set them with the other pole weapons, three guys walked in the door. They were a rough-looking lot, but still wore smiles as they talked to each other. One of them, the tallest with a long white streak in his short black hair, grabbed a shopping basket from next to the door.

"Where's the heavy-duty weapons?" One of the boys asked, a short one with very light blond hair. He had a warped scar that ran across one eye and bright blue eyes. Bluer than the sky.

"All along the far wall and in the corner. They're divided into Materia and non Materia-based." Chyrin smiled and waved a glaive at them in greeting, and the tall one and the blond waved back. The Wutain guy with the long black hair said nothing, and headed straight for the swords. The girl huffed at him and stuck her tongue out, then set the glaives aside for the moment and hefted the box full of ninja weapons onto the counter and got out an assortment of containers to sort things into.

Twenty minutes and several sliced fingers later, Chyrin was almost scraping the bottom of the box with her fingers as she carefully pulled out a handful of kunai and shuriken and began to lightly toss them into their respective almost-overflowing containers. Four fingers across both hands were wrapped in Band-Aids, and she was rather angry at a trench knife, two kunai and a shuriken. She swore loudly as another finger was nicked by a trench knife, and she dropped it quickly into the right basket before grabbing a new Band-Aid. Attempting to get the package open, though, the teen dropped it. She swore again, and stuck her sliced finger in her mouth as she snatched at the Band-Aid with one hand.

"You need some help?" Chyrin jumped, her eyes flying from the elusive rectangle she was chasing across the counter with one hand to meet the bright blue eyes of the blond from before. Her eyebrows furrowed into a glare, and she growled at him around the finger in her mouth before grabbing at the Band-Aid again. The blond watched for a moment before finally grabbing for the Band-Aid too. Both their hands met on the little rectangle, and they both recoiled quickly. The blond was quick to snatch the little object back, though, and he split the package open in a deft movement before peeling one paper backer off. He gently took her afflicted hand in his free one and pulled it from her mouth, then held it in front of him and inspected it.

Chyrin was not one to blush. Definitely not. But the annoying part of the whole situation was that it was almost out of some kind of extremely annoying Shoujo manga. A bright red flush raced across her cheeks as the blond wrapped the Band-Aid around her finger and then smiled brightly at her. She couldn't help but smile back at him, and for a moment it was like some sort of pink and flowery manga moment…

**THUNK!**

The Wutain with the long hair in the group of three guys dropped two thin swords and five Bolt Materia on the counter between the two of them. Chyrin jumped and snatched her hand back, and both of them blushed madly as the Wutain sneered.

"Stop fooling around with the clerk and go grab a new sword." The blond nodded and made a break for the back of the store. Chyrin grabbed the Materia and swords the long-haired guy had dumped on the counter and brought it over to the register to ring it up. The pricing system for the store was fairly simple, the swords were one fixed price and the price went up because of Added Effect charms, blade size and how many Materia slots it had. Both swords were laid on the ruler bolted to the counter next to the register, and Chyrin typed in a few things. She hit a few keys to add up the Bolt Materia, and then printed a receipt.

"Four thousand Gil is your total. I also need an ID… Nobody under the age of sixteen can purchase weapons." The Wutain guy huffed and pulled out his wallet, then pulled out the necessary bills and ID and set them on the counter. He was just gathering the things he had bought and his ID back when the blond and the tall guy came up to the counter. The tall guy had a set of razor claws in his basket as well as Cure and Heal Materia. The blond had a monster of a sword hefted over his shoulder, a set of magna-sheath armor in his other hand.

"Found the perfect sword!" The blond's sword was nearly as large as he was; in fact the monster of a sword was larger than the Buster Sword. Chyrin distinctly remembered having to unpack that sword, and then lug it all the way across the shop. It was solid, and it was antique enough that it didn't have a piece of Materia inside that counteracted the weight. The girl blinked, unsure as to what to make of the spectacle. But she sighed and shrugged, and grabbed the tag from the blond and entered the number into the register. It was from the special weapons section, so it had a specific price.

"You getting any Materia to go with that?" Chyrin smiled as she rang up his magna-sheath armor, and the blond shook his head before grinning at her.

"Already have a mastered Alexander and Hades waiting at home to slot in this thing." The girl printed a receipt, and handed it over.

"Five thousand Gil is your total, and I need an ID." The blond handed over the requisite Gil and identification, and Chyrin beckoned the tall guy forward with one hand as she put the bills in the register with the other and then returned the ID card. The guy was just barely able to buy that sword age-wise! She took the razor claws, very careful of the edges, and put the price into the register. She blinked, though, when he put a shopping basket full of random magical doodads on the counter as well. The other two guys in the group, especially the blond, fixed the tall guy with glares.

"Bleke, do you need half that stuff?" Bleke nodded defensively as Chyrin began ringing everything up. The three of them began arguing, and the girl continued to ring everything up. By the time they had nearly come to blows, Chyrin was done and the receipt printed. She tapped Bleke on the shoulder and handed him the receipt, then gestured to the little digital total on the register.

"Twenty thousand five hundred thirty-seven Gil, sir. I need an ID from you too since you're getting the razor claws." The Wutain and the blond hadn't even realized that Bleke was no longer in the argument, and were yelling at each other. After the quick exchange of Gil and ID the tall guy took his bag and his razor claws and quietly left the store. Chyrin backed up and sat down on a box, reaching over and picking up the crowbar used to open the wooden delivery crates. She still had to crack open the boxes of Accessories and Items, and she'd only been at work for an hour and a half, tops. Quickly, she stood and picked up one of the Accessory crates in both hands.

**THUNK!**

Both of the bickering guys jumped as Chyrin dropped the Accessory crate on the counter.

"You guys gonna keep looking, or am I gonna have to call you on loitering? You've bought your things, now shoo." Her rude attitude was focused more towards the Wutain guy than the blond, but neither of them knew that. The Wutain sneered and left the shop, but the blond smiled at her again so widely that Chyrin could hardly see his blue eyes. Quickly, he leaned his new sword against the counter and grabbed one of the sticky notes from next to the register and one of the pens with fake flowers duct taped to the ends. He wrote something, folded the sticky note in half, and then stuck it to the counter.

"Name's Eil, by the way. Eil Allern." With a wave and a jingle of the bells on the front entrance, Eil was gone and Chyrin was left blushing madly with her fingers lightly gripping the crowbar that was only halfway shoved under the wooden lid of the Accessory box.

She really, really hoped that the yellow sticky note on the counter had his number on it.

* * *

**X3 and so I gave in and gave Chyrin someone to squeal about. Not that she won't have someone to squeal about in a few chapters, but still!**

**No more Avalanche yet, but you'll see. **

**My migrating readers may recognize a few characters in this chapter, but only the migrating ones.**

**PS: Akihiro was one of japan's greatest swordsmiths, second only to Masamune. You can see why I named a sword of the same type as Sephiroth's after one of the deciples of the namesake of said General's sword. Confused? Woo!  
**


	14. Gag Gifts

**The Loveless**

_Lt. Commander Richie_

**Disclaimer: **MINE MINE MINE ALLLLLLLL MINE! Oh, wait, I was thinking about my cosplays. FFVII isn't mine, though I own a copy of almost all the parts of the Compilation… Barring Dirge of Cerberus and Before Crisis, of course. First one because my older brother stole it, second one because it's only available from Japanese cell service carriers. Maybe I'll download it when I go to Japan as a Student Ambassador.

_Chapter 14

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_

"Block!" Chyrin threw her sword up in a sharp motion, and it crashed against the old SOLDIER broadsword that Zoltar had swung at her. She swung the sword up and away, and the broadsword was thrown to the side. The silver-haired teen, her wig sitting on the breaker box next to the back door of Zoltar's Materia'n'Stuff, whipped around and used her momentum to meet her boss' next attack. Once you got the hang of fighting with a katana that met blows like an Electro-Mag Rod, the rest of the fighting was only swinging and hoping you hit something or blocking and hoping that the sword didn't break.

"How'm I doin'?" Chyrin blocked another swing of the broadsword with a high block, and once again she swept the sword up and to the side so as to leave Zoltar open for attack.

"Better than a week ago. Killing that Sweeper help?" Chyrin nodded as she swung forward, only to be blocked by the broadsword. She jumped back and spun her sword twice, coming into a back-handed guard in front of her body with the blades pointed towards her boss.

"How long 'till lunch is over?" Zoltar lunged, and Chyrin met it with her sword.

"Why, you bored?" The two locked swords again, and then Chyrin threw herself back once more. With a sudden lunge, Chyrin jumped back forward just as Zoltar brought his sword down for a strike. The double-bladed katana locked itself around the broadsword down to the hilt, and with a twist Chyrin disarmed her boss.

"No, I'm just winning and want to spare you any more humiliation." They both laughed, and the girl flung the broadsword from between her katana blades before sheathing her weapon behind her. Her silver hair made pressed waves that decided they really wanted into her face.

"Break's over in about five minutes, go finish your lunch." The silver-haired girl nodded, and went over to retrieve her wig and pull her hair back. With a flip she was a brunette once more, and she went back into the store. Thankfully all of her stocking was done and all the newly-delivered weapons and accessories were mostly displayed, so the teen had a chance to sit on one of the crates behind the counter that served as seating, shelving and obstacles so as to eat her lunch.

Marinated Chocobo steak burgers were a gift from a higher power that was strangely benevolent. This was an undisputable fact. Nothing short of genuine Wutai-style noodles in broth was any better. But then, Wutai-style noodles in broth was made infinitely better by cuts of Zolom and Chocobo, so Chyrin wasn't complaining.

But she was definitely complaining when she saw the little pest that was Gene about to take a bite out of her Chocobo steak burger. The teen fixed the boy with a glare, and he smiled sheepishly before setting the burger back down on its wrapping and scooting away to watch _The Marvelous Misadventures of Max Malboro_. Chyrin smiled and nodded at the boy, and sat down to enjoy her burger in relative silence.

About ten minutes after she had finished, disposed of her wrapper, turned the 'Closed' sign to 'Open' and chased a couple kids scratching on the outside wall with sticks away, a customer came in. No surprise there, though, it was Lareth Kingsley. The rather dark individual leaned her gunblade next to the door against the counter and went down the aisle that had higher-level Materia like Destruct and the slightly more powerful Summons like Odin and Phoenix.

"Morning Chyrin!" The swish of metal, leather and fishnet could be heard down a different aisle now, the one with the Status Materia like HP+, MP+, VIT+ and their more powerful counterparts.

"Don't make anything explode, Lareth. I spent a good chunk of yesterday cleaning up the mess from making that Cerberus." The blue-black pixie cut that was just barely visible over the shelves nodded noncommittally, and the clink of a few Materia falling into a basket practically echoed through the empty store. The door bell jingled, and a few off-duty WRO officers in civvies and their red berets waved to Chyrin before heading for the taxidermed monsters in between the wooden bokken and the perishable items freezers.

Besides the occasional laughs coming from the WRO officers as they browsed the mounted Sahagin heads and various other stuffed monsters, Zoltar's Materia'n'Stuff was quiet. For a few minutes, it was just peace as Chyrin sat and watched the aisles. Two women walked in with large shopping lists and headed for the freezers in back, but the whole store was at peace.

"Hey Chyrin, what's the strongest Summon you've got?" Lareth's voice was coming from the Talismans aisle now, and the teen put her head in her hands. So much for quiet.

" Barring the Knights of the Round we sold yesterday, I think that would be either a three-star Alexander or a two-star BahamutSIN." The group of off-duty officers looked up from their browsing, one of them holding a mounted Razor Weed and pretending like it was attacking him.

"You got a permit for that stuff?" Chyrin nodded to them, and shot a thumb over her shoulder to the laminated sheet of green paper with the WRO symbol on it and Zoltar's vending license that were both taped to the wall.

"Could you ring up the Alexander for me then? I don't have one yet." Lareth came out of the Talismans aisle with a basket full of Materia and various other small items. The teen nodded and pushed herself to her feet. Jumping over a few boxes, she knocked on the door to the back room that had been closed a little while ago. Zoltar opened it, blinking in surprise.

"Lareth's here already?" He asked, and Chyrin shrugged.

"She wants our Alexander." Zoltar made a face, but pulled out the keys and handed them to the teen.

"Lareth!" The shopkeeper called. The woman looked over, unsure. "You're cleaning us out of everything. Why not go to a specialty store to get your high-level Summons? Leave some for the common adventurer." The black-haired woman blinked, surprised.

"Did you just refuse me service?" She asked, an eyebrow rising.

"Not really, no. More like told you that you're kinda bad for business. You've been coming in every day for almost a month and a half, buying things just as they get delivered. How am I supposed to sell to other people if you're stockpiling?"

As the conversation continued, Chyrin quickly unlocked the safe and pulled out the Alexander. With a few deft flicks it was in a holder and wrapped in tissue paper. The safe was locked once more, and the teen stood and sat the Materia on the counter in front of Lareth. She didn't notice, so embroiled in her conversation with Zoltar as she was. One of the WRO officers in the group at the counter rang the bell at the register, and Chyrin jumped over a few boxes to get to him. Two of the group of five held stuffed or mounted monsters, and they deposited them on the counter.

"There a reason why a few officers such as yourselves would be buying taxidermed monsters in their off hours?" The group stayed quiet as Chyrin rung up the monsters, looking at each other uncomfortably. "This isn't for some kind of freaky bachelor party, is it?" All of them laughed loudly, shaking their heads.

"No, they're birthday gifts for someone who really doesn't like having his birthday celebrated." Chyrin smiled and sat the last stuffed Razor Weed down on the counter. She printed the receipt for the purchases and handed it over, then popped the register open and put the Gil she received in the till.

"I'll gift wrap them for you for a tiny fee, since we usually don't gift-wrap until the winter season." The guy that had his wallet out to pay, who had the look of someone who had drawn the short straw, nodded and pulled out an extra five Gil.

"This enough?" He asked, as Chyrin began pulling boxes from the floor and the wrapping paper from where Zoltar had shown her it was stored.

"Yeah, that should be good." The teen took the bill and pocketed it. The first Razor Weed went into a cardboard box, and the teen began wrapping. "Where I come from people usually don't give gag gifts unless the person is totally over the hill. This guy a superior officer that needs to retire as well as come to terms with how old he is?" Chyrin talked as she wrapped, taping carefully for a less-than-perfect wrapping job that could still be considered good. She pulled out a roll of regular blue ribbon to go with the red paper, and began tying it around the box.

"Nah, he's not retiring any time soon. Just needs to grow a sense of humor." One of the guys in the back of the group, who was kneeling down and playing with a Silence charm, said. In a puff of green smoke he was clutching at his throat and apparently yelling, though nobody could hear him. The WRO officers roared with laughter at the plight of their buddy, which finally got Zoltar and Lareth to stop bickering. Lareth snatched up the Alexander, and Zoltar crossed the space behind the counter to lightly nudge Chyrin out of the way and key in all of the woman's purchases.

"If he needs to grow a sense of humor and you're giving him stuffed and mounted monsters for his birthday, don't you think that's kinda counter-intuitive? He might just shoot your face off. You WRO guys have permits to carry guns that big." The officers looked at each other nervously, as though only just realizing their error.

"The head of Intel will be there. She'll hold him off." One of them tried to assure the others, and Chyrin smiled.

"While you all run screaming like little girls?" The girl gestured to a knot in the ribbon with her head, and one of the officers put his finger on it so she could tie a bow.

"Sounds about right, yeah." With a final knot, the last of the presents was wrapped. Chyrin pulled out a handful of gift tags and put them on top of the small pile of gifts, waving as the off-duty officers made their ways out the door with their purchases. The last guy out the door held it open for a young Wutain girl that was probably about fourteen, with finger-waved hair and wearing a rather Lolita black and white dress festooned with lace and large ribbons.

"Zoltar?" Chyrin snapped back to attention, unsure as to where the conversation between Zoltar and Lareth had gone. "You sure you won't reconsider?"

"Yes." The teen blinked at the exchange, watching as Lareth hoisted her bag of purchases over one shoulder and swung her gunblade over her other shoulder. Then she was out the door with a jingle. A small tinkling sound came from down one aisle as the girl in the large dress brushed against a set of Heal Bells, but other than the fluorescent lights the place was relatively quiet. The two women with the shopping lists were conversing in hushed voices about what cut of Zolom liver to get, but quiet was good. Very good.

"What's the highest level of Materia you've got?" The girl in the dress came out of an aisle towards the middle of the shop, a smile on her face. She held a small basket with a dozen shuriken and a dozen kunai in it, along with a few low-level Fire One Materia.

"A Mastered BahamutZERO alright with you? We sold our Knights of the Round yesterday and Lareth just bought our Alexander." The girl nodded, smiling brightly. Puzzled, Chyrin cocked her head to the side and looked at the girl again. She was a little tall to be as young as she looked, but she was easily passable. She also looked familiar… Though Chyrin wasn't too sure where she had seen her before. She had probably come in before, nothing big.

"Something wrong?" The girl asked, looking concerned. Chyrin jumped and shook her head, smiling.

"No, you just remind me of someone, I'm not too sure who though." The teen gestured to the basket the girl held. "You want me to start ringing that up?" The basket was passed over the counter, and Chyrin found herself staring down her one nemesis in the entire store… The little sharp objects from that morning. With her bandaged fingers, she began carefully pulling the metal objects from the basket and ringing them up. They were dropped rather unceremoniously into a bag, the teen holding them _very _glad to be rid of them. Next were the low-level Fire Materia.

"Do you deliver?" The Wutain girl asked with a smile, and Chyrin nodded as she dropped the last of the Fire One Materia in the bag. Zoltar sat her BahamutZERO on the counter, and Chyrin keyed it in to the total.

"You want these delivered somewhere?" Zoltar asked, and the girl shook her head as she accepted her receipt and handed over the requisite amount of Gil.

"No, just wondering. I might come back later to look at you fuuma-shuriken." With a swish of her skirt and a jingle of the door bell, the girl was gone. Chyrin still couldn't shake the feeling that she looked like someone she knew or knew of… But hell if she knew.

* * *

"Ma, I'm back! Brought your cereal, too!" The apartment building was once again nice and loud, which was definitely a plus. Now nobody could hear if Catherine decided to do nothing but watch the equivalent of the History channel all day. Chyrin sat the grocery bags down on the counter and began putting the groceries away; leaving the Behemoth steak she had bought out on the counter. As she passed by the stove, she turned one of the range tops on to high heat and pulled out a frying pan before continuing to put away the cheese, milk and several slices of chocolate cake she had bought at the bakery on the way back home. The wig came off next and was situated on its wig head, and the teen went about other business while stray loks of silver began falling in her face.

"Oh good. Hey, did you know that apparently Wutai has some of the most abundant Mako energy in the world, but they've never used it?" Chyrin sighed as she unwrapped her steak and sat it in the frying pan on the stove. It began to sizzle lightly, and the smell of cooking meat slowly began to permeate the small apartment.

"Yeah, ma. That's why ShinRa went to war with Wutai, because Wutai wouldn't let them build reactors there. Don't believe everything you see on TV." Catherine nodded, her white streak in her hair flopping about in a funny way.

"I figured as much. Could you bring me a bowl of cereal, hun?" Chyrin pulled out a bowl and poured some of the new cereal into it, then pulled the refrigerator open and got the milk out.

"Hey mom?" Chyrin asked, pouring some milk into the bowl of cereal. Catherine peeled her attention away from the documentary on ShinRa's rise to power that she was watching to look at her daughter. "If a guy gives you his number, should you call right away or wait a while?"

"Depends," Catherine began, accepting her bowl of cereal when Chyrin walked over and gave it to her. "How cute is he?" Chyrin broke out into a terrible blush as she pulled the spatula from one of the drawers and flipped her steak over in its frying pan. "C'moooooon, I'm your nose-picking mother, I gotta know!"

"He's blond, and he's got blue eyes, and he's nice. Do I really have to describe him all that much, ma?" The baby-sized woman squealed in delight, making her daughter's blush deepen. The girl flipped her steak again, hoping that the meat would cook evenly on the old range-top.

"You like him enough not to call him an idiot! That's a total first! Call him!" Chyrin wanted to bang her head on a wall. She wanted to so very badly. But instead she reached into a pocket and pulled out the yellow sticky note. To be funny about the situation, it was a shiny yellow sticky note of hope. With another deft flick, the steak was flipped again and Chyrin pulled the phone from its base on the wall. She tapped the number on the sticky note into the handset, and then sat the note down as she poked and prodded her Behemoth steak.

"_Hello?" _After a few rings, someone answered. It wasn't Eil though. It sounded more like the tall guy, Bleke.

"Is Eil there?" Chyrin asked, ready to apologize for getting a wrong number. Instead, she got an earful of a loud yell as the speaker didn't bother to cover the receiver of the phone.

"_EIL! PHONE!"_ The silver-haired girl winced as it sounded like something was knocked over and then again when it sounded like someone was thrown into a wall. The phone made a noise like it was being thrown through the air before a loud clunk came from it. At least it was caught instead of hitting the floor.

"_Hello?" _The blond on the other end sounded vaguely in pain, and he grunted as he apparently blocked an attack. _"Not now, Kaino! Just a sec! Who am I speaking to?"_

"Chyrin, Chyrin Renton. You gave me your number this morning." Chyrin busied herself with flipping her steak again, and then squeezed the phone between her shoulder and ear as she looked for a knife.

"_Oh! Uh- Erm… Hey!" _The blond sounded a bit flustered, and a loud clunk came through the phone as though he had just dropped his monster of a sword. _"So, uh… Yeah, um... I totally had an idea as to what to say to you when you called but now I'm totally drawing a blank." _Chyrin couldn't help but giggle at him as she cut into her Behemoth steak to see if it was cooked enough.

"That's okay. You gave me your number for a reason, right?" The girl smiled to herself as she flipped her steak again and sat the knife aside, grabbing the phone before it fell to the ground.

"_Yes! Er… So, do you want to, uh-" _The blond on the other side was definitely the easily flustered sort… Which was odd, seeing as he was so confident and cool at Zoltar's.

"Go out some time?" Chyrin finished for him, and she could practically hear the blush that the blond had.

"_Absolutely!" _The answer was a bit fast, but nonetheless endearing. The silver-haired teen smiled as she pulled a plate out of the cabinet above her head and sat it on the counter. _"So, er... When do you want to, uh… Yeah."_

"Um… Friday?" Chyrin flipped her steak onto her plate and pulled out a fork to compliment her knife. The range-top was turned off and the frying pan put in the sink, and the teen leaned against the counter with a smile.

"_Friday is good- Kaino! Bleke! Guys, stop laughing! It's not funny!"_ Chyrin couldn't help but snicker slightly at the blonde's plight. _"Not you too, Chyrin!"_

"I'm sorry Eil, it's just kinda funny is all." The teen brushed silver hair from her face and smiled lightly. "So, Friday?"

"_I can do that. I'll pick you up when you get off work, 'kay?"_ Eil sounded ecstatic, and Chyrin's light smile turned into a full-blown grin.

"That sounds good! I'll call you if something comes up, alright?" The girl pushed herself from the counter and picked up her plate and utensils. Her steak was now only lukewarm, but she didn't really care.

"_Okay, I'll uh… I'll see you then. Bye?"_ Eil sounded unsure, and Chyrin couldn't help but giggle. Again. What in Jenova's name was wrong with her?

It wasn't until a while later, after the phone had eventually been hung up and the steak eaten and Chyrin and Catherine were watching a re-run TV movie that dramatized the Wutai War that the silver-haired girl realized that the girl that had bought all those kunai and shuriken was Yuffie Kisaragi.

* * *

**DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNNNNNNN...**

**Er, yeah. Someone special is in the next chapter, but you'll have to wait and see. A few people have already guessed, though.**

**Do the impossible break the unbreakable, row row fight the power! Touch the untouchable see the invisible, row row fight the power! Guess what I got stuck in my head?**


	15. An Order and a Loon

**The Loveless**

_Lt. Commander Richie_

**Disclaimer: **I don't own anything. Not FFVII, not anything I write about, not anything I cosplay. Owning Stargate, FFVII, Kingdom Hearts, Trinity Blood and D Gray-Man would be pretty cool, though.

_Chapter 15

* * *

  
_

Before Chyrin knew it, it was the end of the week and she and Zoltar were due at the WRO offices to ratify their restraining order against Lamaida. When she got up that morning she certainly didn't think the day was particularly special. Of course not. It wasn't until she was halfway out the door with her regular wig on and wearing a ground-length buckled black trenchcoat with a monstrous high collar that covered her face that the phone rang. The teen closed her apartment door and furrowed her brow at the phone, taking it from its place on the wall.

"Chyrin speaking." Who the hell would be calling her? Lamaida didn't know her home number and neither did Eil... Oddly enough. The date the night before had been an amazing amount of fun, but she had totally spaced on giving the blond her number.

_"Oh good, I caught you! You didn't forget about us being closed today, did you?"_ At those words from her boss, Chyrin reached up and pulled off her regular wig and sat it back on its wig head on the counter.

"Because of the thingy with the WRO today, right?" The teen began taking off her jacket, carefully undoing every buckle while holding the phone between her ear and shoulder.

_"Yeah. We gotta be there in an hour. Dress nicely, this is important to us." _The coat was thrown onto the couch and Chyrin opened up the refrigerator to pull out a half-eaten slice of cake she had been nibbling on all week.

"I got it Zoltar. Anything else?" With a fork in hand, the teen took a bite of the slice of cake. Breakfast of champions, that.

_"Don't bring Catherine along. You'll have to explain it, and those explanations always end strangely." _Chyrin chewed thoughtfully, then swallowed. Idly, she noted that the living room was getting a bit dirty and she really needed to do laundry.

"Got it, boss. See ya in an hour." With that, the phone was set back in its cradle and the girl took another bite of cake before putting the fork in the sink and the nearly-finished slice of cake back in the fridge. She took her time going back to her room and pulling off the Third-Class uniform she was wearing, then shoved her small closet open to survey what she owned that wasn't a SOLDIER uniform or some variation of one. There wasn't much.

"You look good in blue and pink, if you're trying to do something besides wear a uniform." Catherine was standing in the door, nearly swimming in a large bath towel. Behind her were little wet footprints, and across the hall the bath tub was draining.

"I actually have a court date to get a restraining order against Lamaida." Catherine nodded sagely, walking over to her own little pile of clothes and pulling out a yellow onesie with Chocobos embroidered on it.

"Then dress nicely. Didn't you get that top with the ruffles on it a couple weeks ago?" That was true, she _had _gotten a blue silk tank top with two opposite-facing lines of ruffles down the front, but she didn't have a skirt that really went with it.

"Where'd I put that top?" Chyrin asked, digging through the piles upon piles of sleeveless sweaters and baggy pants. She uncovered a garment bag carefully folded under a clean pile of pants, and hung it up before unzipping it. Inside was the shirt she was looking for, along with all her other nice clothes. She dug through a few skirts in darker colors, settling on a black one with a series of white ribbon lines.

"You should hang that bag up, those clothes are nice." Catherine commented, and Chyrin zipped the bag but left it hanging on her closet door. The teen pulled the shirt on and then the skirt, pulling her silver hair into a knot on the back of her head. It was getting long again, she would have to cut it. For a moment the girl considered the long black coat with the buckles she had become attached to, but decided against it as she walked out of her room and into the kitchen. Instead, she picked her mother's old labcoat up off a kitchen stool where it had been sitting for a good month or so. When Chyrin had originally needed a coat, she had taken the labcoat to a tailor and had them give it large cuffs with oversized buttons and over-exaggerated points on the collar. The edges of the coat had been done up in blue ribbon, giving the coat a very nice quality.

"You'd better wear that nicely-styled wig. You took so long on it, you should wear it out." Catherine came out of the bedroom in her Chocobo-print onesie, her black and white hair still wet. Chyrin nodded and picked up the wig with the ponytail, carefully putting it on and pulling it into place. It fit well, and didn't show any signs of wanting to pull backwards. She shrugged into the white coat, then went on a hunt for the pair of black heels she owned for purposes exactly like this one. She found them in their box, shoved in the top shelf of her small closet. They zipped up the heel and had big gold buckles on them, and the entire outfit looked very good with itself. As an afterthought the teen pulled out a nice belt and fastened it around her waist.

"How's this, ma?" Chyrin came back into the kitchen and twirled for her mother, and the baby-sized woman clapped in approval. The teen picked up her sword from where she had set it on the counter and fastened it to the back of her belt, then picked up the purse that went with the outfit from a chair next to the door and put her chain wallet in it.

"We're outta cereal again, don't forget to get some on your way home." Chyrin nodded noncommittally, waving a hand as she opened the door to the apartment. Her heels clicked on the wooden floor of the hall outside.

"I got it ma, I won't be late either. I don't actually have work today." The door shut with a click, and Chyrin was on her way. With every step she took as she walked towards and then down the stairs to the ground floor, her sword bumped against the backs of her legs. Out on the sidewalk, she strode with a defined purpose towards the main office of the WRO.

* * *

Walking five miles in heels, Chyrin decided as she walked into the WRO's main building, was not a good idea. They may have been good quality, but it was simply not one of her best decisions. But the pain in her feet was quickly forgotten as she took in the sight around her. The building was vaguely how she remembered it from Dirge of Cerberus, not that she could remember much of that game since her copy had been stolen before she had even gotten to a halfway point. The teen strode up to the front desk, looking around her all the while at the hustle and bustle that was the World Regenisis Organization.

"Can I help you?" The secretary behind the desk had a smile, but it was the perpetual kind that never let up. Specifically, it was the kind of smile someone was paid to keep on their face. "We don't do tours, if you're wondering."

"Huh? Oh, no." Chyrin smiled sweetly and brushed part of the bangs of her wig out of her face. "I'm actually looking for someone. My boss applied for a restraining order against someone for both him and myself, and I was told I needed to be here when it was signed by the head of Public Safety." The secretary typed something quickly into her computer.

"Chyrin Renton?" The girl in question nodded. "Go up to the fifth floor, take a left and the Public Safety offices are the third door on the right."

"Thanks!" Chyrin took off for the elevators, her heels clicking across the polished floor. She came to a stop in front of the closed doors of the elevator, and hit the 'Up' button with barely-concealed enthusiasm. She began bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet, jittery from the excitement of being in the WRO building.

"Ever thought of switching to decaf?" The teen jumped as the white and red-clad soldier next to her spoke suddenly, taking her unawares. Hell, she hadn't even heard him walk up!

"I don't drink coffee, it's kinda bad for you." The soldier shrugged noncommittally. "Besides, I'm just excited."

"For what, is it 'Take Your Daughter to Work Day' or something? I didn't know any of the higher-ups had kids." Chyrin couldn't help but snicker along with the guy next to her. The elevator doors opened, and she jumped inside and immediately hit the button for the fifth floor.

"Nope! My boss filed for a restraining order against a woman that's been stalking the both of us. She got it into her head a while back that I'm a drug-addicted prostitute single mother that lives in the old Midgar Slums, and now she won't leave either of us alone." The soldier blinked several times, unsure as to what to make of the girl that had just said all that with a totally calm face.

"I can see why you're happy." He finally said, just as the doors opened to the fifth floor with a _ding_. "Nice talking to you!" The doors closed again, but this time Chyrin was on the other side of them. Her heels clicked on the floor of the hallway as she took a left and walked purposefully towards the Public Safety offices. The door was an unassuming grayish blue that opened as the teen turned to it, and closed behind her as she entered the offices. A secretary waved to her, and she sat down next to Zoltar. He looked a little funny in a dress shirt and tie, but the girl didn't say anything. She pulled her sword out from underneath her, letting it hang at her side.

"Secretary said about ten minutes ago that the department head was just finishing up a meeting. We should be allowed in in just a little while." And so they waited. It was almost as bad as dentist appointments, but the magazines on the tables were slightly less dated and had more interesting topics. At least there were no gossip rags... Hello, what was this? It looked like the most recent issue of _S5_, a popular gossip rag. So much for sanity. Chyrin blinked at the cover once, twice, and then leaned over and picked it up delicately from coffee table with two fingers. It was utter trash worse than Cosmo and _US_ had been before the teen had come to Edge. Sure it was one of the higher-grossing magazines on Eastern Continent, emphasis on the _gross_ part, but to the girl holding it it was nothing more than garbage.

"People actually read this stuff?" She asked rhetorically, gesturing to the cover that proclaimed some nonsense about a sordid love affair that a movie star was involved in. "Do they really have no lives?" Zoltar plucked the magazine from her fingertips and flipped it open to the cover story, reading just to spite her.

"This is actually pretty interesting. Laughable, but interesting." He finally remarked after several minutes of silence save for the apparent classic rock station being played from the radio in the corner. Chyrin nodded absently as she read the covers of the other magazines on the coffee table. Her large ponytail waved back and forth when she turned her head to look at the back cover of the magazine Zoltar held. Again she blinked once, twice at the offensive rag of a publication before snatching it from her employer and staring intently at a picture on the back cover. No _way_.

"Sweet _Holy_." She said, staring intently. It was Vincent Valentine's old ShinRa personnel photo, if the dark blue suit with the zipper up the front was any indication. The short hair and lack of a big red bandanna was helpful too. Next to it was a comparison shot that was pretty recent... It looked like it had been taken within the last year. '_Hotter with short hair? You decide!_'was the caption for the photo, and in a short movement Chyrin tossed the magazine back onto the coffee table. "AVALANCHE ending up in a rag like that... Disgusting."

"Yuffie Kisaragi did a centerfold for _Upper Plate_ when it ran an article on the economic crisis in Wutai." Chyrin raised one eyebrow, then two, at her boss. "It was tasteful! I only picked that one issue up, and only for that article."

"Too much information, Zoltar. _Too. Much. Information_." Chyrin hissed, before putting her head in her hands and shaking it. Her ponytail flopped from side to side as she did so. They didn't have to wait much longer, and it was only a few minutes before the secretary called to them to go to the department head's office. The office was a cheery room, the man behind the desk a tall balding fellow with glasses. He stood as they entered, and shook Zoltar's hand before shaking Chyrin's. He gestured to the two chairs in front of his desk, and they sat. Chyrin crossed her ankles under the chair and sat her hands in her lap while Zolatar looked totally at ease.

"So I understand you need a restraining order ratified against a stalker?" The department head got straight to business, accepting the manila folder Zoltar handed him. He and Chyrin nodded, solemn. The man behind the desk flipped through the folder, reading here and there. "What started this?" The teen looked to her boss, then at the ceiling, trying hard not to laugh.

"Would you believe me if I said that she took me to a hospital because she thought I was a prostitute, began following me after I kicked her in the head, mistook my younger sister for my daughter and is now operating under the assumption that I'm a danger to myself and others and I'm apparently feeding a drug addiction too?" The department head blinked from behind his glasses, his eyebrows furrowing.

"I suppose I've heard stranger." The older man shuffled through the manila folder, then paused at a page. "Miss Renton, do you have a birth certificate anywhere?" Chyrin blinked, surprised. "I only asked because when one of my staff tried to pull up your records they couldn't find anything."

"I wasn't born on Eastern Continent." Internally, the teen began to panic. This wasn't good, this was _not _good at all. She needed a lie, and she needed one _fast_. "I was born in Nibelheim. My family moved to Rocket Town when I was really little... It was just a little while after that that ShinRa covered up the burning of Nibelheim when General Sephiroth went off the deep end." She finished her statement with a smile, uncrossing her legs and crossing them again on the other side.

"That's perfectly alright. Any original records would have gone up with the rest of the town, I suppose. Stop by Records on your way out and have a few things filled out for posterity's sake." The department head grabbed a pen and signed the last document in the manila folder, then circled another part of the document. "In fact, while you're in Records have an ID made so we can put the picture on file with the restraining order. Sound like a plan?"

"I'll make sure she gets there. You don't need-" Zoltar began, only to be cut off by the older man.

"Nope, don't need Lamaida Randall to come in. We'll add stalking to any list of misdemeanors she already has and put her ID on file with the rest of the restraining order." Chyrin breathed a sigh of relief she didn't know she had been holding, and stood. Zoltar did as well, and they shook hands with the department head and said a few words before leaving.

* * *

"Hey Zoltar, how long have I been working for you?" This form was confusing. Chyrin figured a while back that it was more trouble than it was worth to get an ID from the WRO, but she hadn't bet on it being this tough.

"Over six months, I think." The teen checked the '6 months or more' box, and continued down the line of questions in a systematic fashion. She filled out her birthday, her place of residence, how many pets she owned and whether or not she owned a weapon. Then she shifted her weight to her other foot and began again on the other side of the page. Once that was completely filled out, she straightened up from where she had been leaning against a high table and studied the rack of forms in front of her.

"Hey Zoltar, did I fill out a Weapons Registry form when I bought my sword?" The shopkeeper looked up from his magazine with a slight frown on his face, contemplating.

"Yeah, indirectly. I fill out the Weapons Registry forms for all the weapons we get and then just put names into the corresponding places when someone buys them. If you want to leave the city with the weapon you have to have a license, and that requires a couple more forms." Chyrin blanched and sat the Weapons Registry form back down, then slid it away from herself on the table with one finger. Nasty stuff, forms were. The teen picked up her small pile of forms and walked over to the desk where the secretary sat, her heels clipping on the linoleum. The woman behind the counter took them with the same kind of paid-for smile that the woman at the front foyer desk had given her, looked over them briefly, and then gestured to the camera and backdrop several feet away.

"You're gonna want to smile for this." Chyrin smiled brightly as she walked out and faced the camera, then brushed a little bit of wig hair out of her face before the woman snapped a few pictures. The flash swum before her eyes in a funny pattern, making the fake brunette blink a few times. She made her way back to a seat and flopped over in it, nearly tripping in her high heels.

"So in the event that I want to leave the city for adventure I have to register my weapon with the WRO?" Chyrin asked conversationally, putting a hand over her eyes as she tried to make the green splotches in her vision go away.

"Unless you've got really extenuating circumstances, yeah." Zoltar didn't look up from the magazine he read as he spoke, flipping through ads to get to the second half of the article he was reading.

"Extenuating like how?" Slowly but surely Chyrin was coming to the realization that her wig was kinda itchy. She really couldn't wait until she could get back to the apartment and take it off, then get out of the nasty-tall shoes she was wearing and fall asleep watching old cartoon re-runs.

"Like in the event of disaster, kidnapping or other personal busi- hey, cool, Lagfallio's Furniture Outlet is having a sale." Obviously, the Costa Del Solian man that was the girl's boss wasn't paying too much attention to her. She sighed deeply, taking her hand off her eyes.

"How is disaster personal business?" No sooner had the words left her mouth did the screaming start. The words in the scream were hard to make out through the door and the distance from the second floor to the lobby, but it was a single woman screaming. Zoltar and Chyrin jumped to their feet and were out the door to the balcony walkway that opened up to the lobby to see just what was going on.

"This girl is in an unsafe environment! Her mother is a teenage prostitute that's feeding a drug habit and leaves her at home to fend for herself all day! Please, take her and get her mother in custody!" Chyrin's hands would have tightened around the banister of the balcony, but she was too busy turning around and beating her head on the wall.

"Goddamnit Lamaida..." She muttered, her head-banging petering out to simply resting her forehead on the wall. "Really?" The teen asked, tilting her head up to look at the ceiling. "_Really_? Did I do something _wrong _in a past life or something?"

"She's actually got your mom this time." Zoltar remarked, two fingers pinching the bridge of his nose as he tried to fend off the headache that was forming. "You should probably get down there before someone important gets called." When Chyrin refused to stop asking questions of the omnipotent being that was apparently living in the ceiling, he tried again. "You didn't want Reeve Tuesti involved, right? It kinda looks like the secretary down there is about to call him. Either that or a lot of guards."

"_Crap_." The teenager muttered, before taking off at a sprint towards the stairs that led to the ground floor. She took them two at a time in her heels, nearly twisting her ankle once before she used the handrails for balance points to vault herself safely down. As soon as her feet hit the tiled floor of the lobby she was off like a rocket, zeroing in on the woman in the LOVELESS shirt and insulated vest that currently held a black-and-white-haired baby in Chocobo coveralls.

"-'am, when you took the child, regardless of whether or not it was an unsafe environment, it's still considered kidnapping. I'm going to have to call an officer to take you into custody and a social services worker for the child and possibly her mother." The secretary was attempting and failing rather spectacularly to calm Lamaida down, who was crooning to Catherine in an attempt to calm _her _down, though she was perfectly calm and had a wad of Lamaida's hair in one chubby fist. From the strained expression the rather nutty woman wore through the crooning, the baby was pulling pretty hard and had no intention to let go.

"Lamaida!" Chyrin barked, coming around the desk the secretary was seated at with a nasty expression on her face. "What in Minerva's name do you think you're doing? Did you break into my _apartment_? You _kidnapped _my _little sister_? Are you out of your mind, woman, or just more so than usual?"

"See?" The woman said, pointing at Chyrin with one hand and attempting to pull Catherine's hand out of her hair with the other. "That's her! She's violent, negligent, she can't be trusted with someone this age!"

"I have had it up to the top of my ridiculously large ponytail with you, Lamaida. I really wanna know what mental institution you escaped from, because you need to be sent back. I'm not a prostitute, I'm not addicted to any drugs, illegal or not, you've kidnapped my _sister _and as of-" Chyrin paused her tirade long enough to glance at a clock before continuing, "an hour ago? You can't be within a whole bunch of feet of me, Zoltar, where I live, where I work or anyone I spend a lot of time with without getting locked up!" The teen paused for a moment, surveying the still faces of the people around her with something akin to a cross between embarrassment and amusement. "And I would kick you in the head again, but I'm wearing a nice skirt."

"You juvenile _bitch_." Lamaida hissed, pointing at the teen with vehemence. "This is for your own good! You're so deeply entrenched in your own psychosis that you just don't get it, do you? You're sick. You need all _kinds_ of medical help!" As quickly as they could two WRO officers lunged forward and grabbed the woman just as she made a grab for Chyrin. They struggled against her, but held firm. "I'll get you for this! You need my help!"

"Shut up already you cracked loon!" In a decidedly impulse decision that probably wasn't the smartest of ideas, Chyrin reached behind her and drew her double-bladed sword. A few more officers started forward as she flipped it around and cracked the end of the handle into Lamaida's forehead. She flipped the sword back around and stowed it back in its sheath, before reaching over and picking her baby-sized mother up off of the desk. "Now, if you're planning on taking her into custody for violating her restraining order, I'll be going."

The teen promptly turned around and made to leave, only to bump into someone. A very tall someone. In fact, the surface in front of her shouldn't have been so tall. Or so red. Or so slightly musty and involving large black buckles with silver fasteners. Chyrin looked up, and her eyes went rather wide. She seriously resisted the urge to drop her mouth open in the kind of shock you only have after seeing something amazingly amazing. The massively tall man that just so happened to be Vincent Valentine looked down at her.

"I'm _so _sorry!" The teen said, backing up with her eyes wide. Before anyone could say anything else she had bolted out the door as fast as her heels could carry her without breaking her ankle.

* * *

**So Chyrin's finally met Vincent Valentine. This bodes well? You decide.**

**PS: I'm working on chapter 16 at the moment, and barring no interference I should have plenty of time to do lots of writing. This chapter itself is seven or so pages long, and if I don't get distracted (by Stargate, which I most likely will, but whatever) then you'll maybe have it and a huge plot point within the next couple of chapters. Maybe. You didn't hear it from me. **

**So yeah, I'm outtie. Ja ne!  
**


	16. Casting Suspicion

**The Loveless**

_Lt. Commander Richie_

**Disclaimer: **Woah. Liekwoah. Yeah, man. Another update, man. This is like nuts, man.

_Chapter 16

* * *

  
_

"Ohshitohshitohshitohshit- pardon my French, mum." Chyrin slammed the door to the apartment behind her and locked every lock she had on it before setting her mother down and pulling her wig off. "Maaaaaaa, this isn't good!" She wailed, setting the wig on its head and pulling her coat off and throwing it on a chair.

"How so? That Vincent Valentine boy?" Catherine asked, tottering over to the couch in front of the TV and climbing up. Chyrin joined her shortly with a small tub of ice cream and flopped herself all over the couch.

"He wasn't supposed to _ever _see that wig. Ever. Pass the TV guide, would you?" The baby passed the TV guide and Chyrin flipped it open, scanning the printed pages for something interesting to watch. The two of them sat in relative silence as Catherine flipped channels with a chubby finger, pausing only shortly on a History channel before continuing on.

"So why wasn't he supposed to see the wig?" The baby asked, finally stopping on a show called 'Ivvel Gunter: Monster Hunter' and settling back into the couch. Her daughter sighed and sat the TV guide down, and took a large bite of ice cream.

"I was feeling like being funny and styled it to look like his maybe-dead-maybe-not girlfriend that's encased in a big rock. I might have kinda sorta dressed a little like her too." The sheer volume of the _look _Catherine gave her daughter was diffused quite a bit from the fact that it was coming from a little watery and beady pair of baby-sized eyes. "Come on, I'm a slightly rabid and really quite silly cosplaying fangirl! I have to get my kicks somewhere."

"You're strange." The baby deadpanned, before returning her attention to the TV show she had decided on. "Anything good coming up?" She asked, and Chyrin scrabbled for the TV guide before scanning the next hour's block.

"The old 'Gate of the Cetra' movie is on in a little while." She remarked, reading off the lineup for the rest of the day on the Edge version of the Sci-Fi channel. "Followed by alternating episodes of 'Gate of the Cetra: Team 1' and 'Gate of the Cetra: The Lost City'. Sweeeeeeeeet. I love that series!"

"You and your Sci-Fi dramas." Catherine said, sighing and pushing the remote over towards her daughter. "When it comes on you can change the channel. Until then go change out of your nice clothes before you wrinkle them." Chyrin moaned and took another bite of her ice cream, brushing silver hair out of her eyes with the end of the spoon.

"I don' wanna." She muttered around the ice cream, and sunk deeper into the sofa. "I'm comfy and it's kinda cold."

"Don't blame me when you have to pay out the nose for a dry-cleaning bill." The baby-sized woman deadpanned, and her teen daughter made a face around the spoon in her mouth and got up. She sat the ice cream on the table and made her way to the bedroom, the door just barely slamming behind her. About five minutes later she came back out in a pair of SOLDIER pants and a zip-up sleeveless sweater in purple and dark blue respectively. She pulled the spoon from her mouth and stuck it back in the ice cream, taking a large bite. It was quiet for quite a while after that.

* * *

"Our mystery girl wears wigs." Both Yuffie and Reeve gave Vincent funny looks as he sat down and sat his feet on the table in a relaxed fashion that he rarely displayed. "Her hair color from the surveillance Yuffie collected and the hair color I saw on her today differ subtly. It's not much, but it's there."

"You can tell the color difference between a grainy cellphone shot from twenty feet through a store window and a girl you saw for all of twenty seconds, tops?" Yuffie asked, taking her own feet off the long conference table the three AVALANCHE members sat at and leaning forward towards Vincent. "You sure, Vinnie? My guys, that _I _trained by the way, can't even do that."

"I used to be a Turk. When I was, it was standard practice." The gunman deadpanned, tilting one shoe slightly to the side in order to look at the now-fuming ninja princess.

"Our main concern at the moment is figuring out whether or not she's a threat, not whether or not she wears a wig." Reeve finally spoke up, his fingers laced together in front of his chin as he leaned onto the conference table on his elbows. "Cloud and Barret have seen the surveillance, they said it was the same girl. Marlene confirms it. However, since she's brunette we can't prove she has any relation to Sephiroth or the Remnants. Until we can prove that she's got any malicious intent we can't do a single thing." Yuffie suddenly pounded one fist into her other hand, and the action made Reeve jump. Vincent simply raised an eyebrow.

"She's got a grandma! That Lamaida stalker woman said she did!" The ninja said, meeting the blank looks she was getting with an excited grin. "We ask her, we find out what's going on, that's the end of that!" The aging leader of the WRO leaned his forehead into his hand and shook his head. With his free hand he pushed the papers he had in front of him down the table to his head of intelligence and espionage. The ninja snatched them up and quickly scanned them, her excited face falling quickly. "Emancipated minor?! Seriously?! Gawd, she didn't even _give _an address for the woman!"

"Maybe she doesn't exist." Vincent offered, only to be fixed with an almost-comical glare by the young ninja princess that admonished him for even so much as thinking of that. "It's a distinct possibility."

"Gee, Vinnie, I'onno. She and her mother must'a just popped right outta thin air a while back. I'll bet they just appeared on a sidewalk downtown or something!" Yuffie stuck her tongue out at the gunman she sat across from and slid the papers back down the table to Reeve. "Puh-lease. We may have done some crazy stuff and seen even _crazier_ stuff, but I'm pretty sure people have to have parents." With a look of mock frustration, the ninja leaned back in her seat and blew some hair from her face. "Unless they're dead. Which wouldn't be a stretch."

"I can't stress it enough that until she does something that casts suspicion on her we can't actually do anything." Reeve interjected, putting the papers back into the folder in front of him. "So far she's a harmless teenager with a stalker and a younger sister."

"Let's just hope that Tifa can convince Cloud not to go looking for her." Vincent said, just as the double doors to the conference room burst open in a rush of noise and confetti. The former Turk was immediately on his feet with the Cerberus aimed at the massive group of office workers and WRO officers that crowded through the doors with presents and a large cake that was completely taken up by candles. Yuffie was laughing so hard that she actually fell out of her seat holding her stomach. "What's going on?" The gunman demanded, holstering his weapon. Behind him, Reeve picked up his papers and sat them somewhere other than on the table.

"You forgot your own birthday?" He asked, fighting back laughter.

"I didn't find it important compared to some of the other things going on. Like finding this girl." Yuffie made a noise of dismissal in-between the laughs she was still choking out, but didn't get off the floor.

"Didn't you hear Reeve?" She finally asked, barely heard over the clamor of office workers that were setting out presents, lighting the candle-encrusted cake that looked more like a bonfire at this point and just generally chatting. "We can't go after her legally yet." The ninja picked herself up off the floor and braced herself against the side of the table. "So sit back, relax, and wait for her to do something undeniably stupid. Ooh! Open the red and blue ones first!" She grabbed the two boxes wrapped in red paper and tied with a blue ribbon, and pushed them across the table towards her teammate. "You know you want to!"

* * *

It wasn't until about two weeks later that anything special in particular happened. Chyrin laid across a couple boxes during her break, chewing thoughtfully on a marinated Chocobo steak sandwich and watching the cement ceiling with more than a little odd interest. Her attire was her fairly normal one, a dark purple SOLDIER turtleneck and a pair of pants with buckles at the knees and her partial skirt belted on one side. Her double-bladed katana was pressing a bit of an annoying rut into her lower back, but she didn't mind. Her newest acquisition, the rich and beautiful white-blue silk Super Ribbon, was tied in a double-knotted bow securely around her neck. While AVALANCHE wore their pink ribbons for Aerith, and Cloud his dirty dark purple ribbon as well for Zack the teen had surmised, Chyrin wore the one around her neck for Angeal Hewley. It was the same color as his wings.

"Hey, stock girl?" Chyrin lifted her head and looked up at the woman that had spoken on the other side of the counter. "A little help here?" Shoot, she had forgotten to change the sign on the door to 'Closed' for her break. As soon as the realization hit her, though, the fake brunette sat her sandwich down on its wrapper and jumped to her feet. She wiped a little of the marinade off on her white wrist sleeve, then smiled at the small Wutain ninja across the counter from her.

"What can I do for you, ma'am?" Chyrin asked, biting back a grin at the fact that the one and only Yuffie Kisaragi was in _Zoltar's Materia 'n Stuff _looking like she was about to go on an adventure. At least she wasn't wearing the poor excuse for a disguise that was the frilly lolita dress she had worn before.

"Can I see your fuuma-shuriken?" She asked, smiling. Chyrin nodded and pointed to the wall in the back where they hung. The ninja set off in search of weapons, and the teen sat back down on the boxes to finish her lunch break. She almost had the sandwich to her mouth when a huge crash came from the back weapons wall. With a sigh the teen sat her sandwich back down and picked up a broom, coming out from behind the front counter before heading back to the weapons racks. The sight that met her was certainly a sorry one. A massive pile of weapons laid on the ground, swords and shuriken and pikes and all manner of other hand-held weapons. Perched triumphant-looking on top of the pile was a baseball bat with nails through the hitting end. Yuffie stood next to the rack that miraculously hadn't fallen, looking slightly sheepish.

"There goes my lunch break." Chyrin grumbled, and sat the broom against a shelf of Softs. She began picking up the swords that littered the floor, putting them one-by-one back onto the shelf they had fallen from. A second set of hands began picking up the spilled ninja weapons in the pile, fuuma-shuriken and kunai and a large bladed fan going back onto shelves in a much more haphazard way. The two worked carefully around sharp edges for a little while, every implement going back on the shelf where it was at least no longer on the floor. When they finished the ninja offered Chyrin a sorry smile, and the clerk shrugged noncommittally before grabbing the broom she had brought and heading back to the front counter.

Chyrin actually managed to take a bite of her marinated Chocobo sandwich before the phone rang, a simple jingle not unlike the old Victory Fanfare. The teen swallowed and picked up the receiver, keeping a level voice with the person on the other end as she watched the bobbing black hair of Yuffie Kisaragi in the back aisle. The woman on the other end asked a question, and her attention went back to the receiver. "No ma'am, I'm sorry. The sale of Malboro seedlings is illegal, we don't stock them." The woman on the other end heaved a sigh, and before Chyrin could wish her a good day she had hung up. The teen gave her own sigh and put the phone back in its cradle, then picked up her sandwich again and managed to get another three bites into it. That was when the ninja that had been shopping in the back plonked three fuuma-shuriken down onto the counter and began digging in her pockets and belt pouches for her wallet.

"That everything?" Chyrin asked, jumping to her feet and grabbing the special price tags off the giant throwing stars to begin putting them in the register. The ninja princess nodded absentmindedly, still digging for her wallet and twisting all around in the process. Just as the teen managed to get the last tag into the register the ninja finally stopped looking and reached a hand down the front of her blue and yellow shirt to triumphantly pull out her wallet from where it had no doubt been shoved into her bra. "Your total is fifteen thousand seven-hundred fifty Gil." Yuffie handed over the requisite bills and began picking up her purchases, but stopped as one almost fell out of her grip to the floor point-first.

"You got anything I can tie these together with?" She asked, grinning widely. Chyrin nodded and grabbed a spool of packing twine and some scissors from under the counter and began cutting lengths of it to tie the large throwing stars together. It was silent for a little bit except for the rattle of the air unit in the ceiling as the ninja tied her purchases into a bundle. Finally the woman hefted the three over her shoulder and headed for the door.

"Have a nice day." Chyrin said, waving as the door jingled open. Yuffie paused with one foot out the door, looking back at the clerk.

"Hey, that ribbon," she began, peering at it with a skeptics eye. "Do you wear it for anyone?" Chyrin furrowed her eyebrows, looking down at the lush white-blue ribbon tied around her neck.

"Yeah." The teen said, touching a hand to one of the loops of the bow. "I wear it to remember a fallen SOLDIER. Do you wear yours for someone?" She asked, raising an eyebrow at the pink ribbon tied around the ninja's upper arm. Chyrin knew what AVALANCHE wore their ribbons for, but it didn't hurt her cover to ask, innocently, like she didn't really understand the importance.

"Someone who died." Yuffie said, and leaned in the doorway to take some of the weight of her fuuma-shuriken off her back for a moment. "Who was the SOLDIER?" The ninja couldn't help but be suspicious. The girl in front of her was under suspicion for being a Remnant, and not only that but wore a ribbon for a SOLDIER. There were too many things adding up about this girl.

"He was one of the heroes of the Wutai War, a SOLDIER First-Class." The ninja narrowed her eyes, her suspicion intensifying almost tenfold at the teen's words. More and more things were beginning to shore up against the girl in only this one conversation. "He deserted, but eventually he came back. He didn't deserve the hatred he got from so many people." Carefully, slowly, Yuffie reached for the PHS in her belt pouch. Reeve had said that they wouldn't act until she cast suspicion on herself, and this was a lot of suspicion. "His name was Angeal Hewley. He mentored Zack Fair, First-Class. He was the one that originally wielded the Buster Sword, and I look up to him and his ideals."

Yuffie nodded and her hand came away from her belt pouch, but she didn't stop watching the girl carefully. With a final jingle the door to Zoltar's Materia'n Stuff closed behind her, and she made her way a little ways down the street before grabbing her PHS from her belt pouch and flipping it open to hit speed dial for Reeve. It rang twice before the man picked up.

"Can you get someone to call up everything we've got on Angeal Hewley?" She asked, looking up at the cloudy gray sky that painted the entirety of Edge a monochromatic shade. "That Chyrin girl knows a lot about him and I could have sworn he was classified."

* * *

**Uh oh, Chyrin's kinda really slipped up big time now~**

**Next chapter will be a bit of a doozy maybe. Another time skip, and something you might not be expecting may or may not just happen to go bang in your face. Had a lot of fun at Sakuracon last weekend, and I'm still feeling kinda devious because of it. Dunno when I'll update next, though, so get settled.  
**


	17. Kidnapped!

**The Loveless**

_Lt. Commander Richie_

**Disclaimer: **Don't own nothing. Although I certainly find it cool that I've been working on this story for a whole year. Can you believe that? And to think it's still not near done.

_Chapter 17

* * *

_

"What've we got?" Yuffie burst into a conference room in the WRO building with a smile on her face and a plan in mind. Her eyes met Vincent's, then Reeve's, then surprisingly enough Cloud's, then back to Reeve's oddly apologetic gaze. The ninja's attention shifted to the single cardboard filing box on the table, taped shut with red plastic tape in several places. The tape seal was unbroken, funnily enough. "Don't tell me that's it."

"This is it." Reeve heaved a sigh as he sat both hands on top of the box. "Basically everything on Angeal Hewley was destroyed after he deserted. We've got a few research documents right here, a few official inquiries as to descendants with it, an extremely short will and an even shorter public medical history. Everything else was either destroyed like I said or went down with the ShinRa tower."

"So what are we waiting for?" The brunette asked, putting her hands on her hips and raising an eyebrow. "Vinnie, pop a claw and slice that tape wide open. If this girl knows more than even the WRO about this guy then we can bring her in, right?"

"We're waiting for the lawyer." Reeve said, and he promptly flopped down in the chair behind him. "You're welcome to wait with us." Yuffie pulled out her own chair and flopped into it, setting her feet on the table. Cloud was already sitting, but he leaned onto the table all the same with the look of someone that had too much on their mind. Vincent moved and sat down across from her, his golden clawed gauntlet set on the table with the distinct sound of metal on wood. There was silence for a while except for the flicker of the fluorescent lights in the ceiling. It stretched on for a good ten minutes, to the point where Yuffie had resorted to cleaning her short fingernails with one of her kunai.

"'Pop a claw'?" Vincent finally asked, an eyebrow raised to the point where the ninja across from him couldn't see it under the red bandanna he wore. He held up his clawed appendage and looked at the sharp metal points, making them glint in the harsh light as he turned the hand from left to right. Yuffie stashed the kunai away and sat up in the conference chair from where she had been steadily sliding forward.

"Huh? A figure of speech, Vinnie. I meant you should use your box-cutter fingernails to slice open the tape." Almost as soon as she had finished speaking the door to the conference room burst open for a short pot-bellied man with a shining bald spot and a dark puke-yellow suit that was straining to hold in his girth. He held a briefcase that had seen better days, and his access pass for the higher levels of the building was clipped hastily to the lapel of his suit jacket. He was wheezing and a little red, not at all a pretty sight. Yuffie had him pegged as a former ShinRa defense attorney.

"I certainly hope you haven't opened that yet." The portly man heaved and wheezed, grabbing a chair and promptly collapsing into it. He sat his briefcase on the table and opened it, still breathing heavy. Reeve shook his head, mirrored by Cloud. Oddly, or maybe not so much, the blond had remained quiet. "Good. Despite his standing as a traitor to ShinRa, he still has rights to a ShinRa-appointed attorney. Even posthumously. Something to do with a binding contract that Director Lazard wrote up for security with his First Classes." The lawyer pulled out a sheaf of papers from his briefcase and then closed the case. "This is an inventory of that box. If you do anything to alter the contents of the box then I'll have the legal grounds to run the WRO into the dirt despite the absence of ShinRa as a company or power."

"...We're only going through it for confirmation on a possible security leak. Angeal Hewley was extremely classified after he disappeared, but we've got a girl under suspicion for being a Remnant of Sephiroth that rattled off a summary of and possibly even more than what survives of his file. We're not going to change anything- we have no reason to." Reeve stood and pulled out a small pocket knife, flipping open the even smaller blade and pulling the apparently surprisingly heavy cardboard box towards himself. "Now if you don't mind...?" The lawyer sighed and nodded his consent, still slightly wheezing from his run up to the conference room. With a few deft slices, the tape was broken on each side of the box and the lid was carefully lifted off. Yuffie jumped to her feet and ran to peer inside the box, half because she wanted away from the lawyer and half from anticipation.

The contents were sparse. A few jam-packed manila folders sat at the bottom, with looser papers and a sealed envelope on top of that. There were two other folders and a series of small square cases, no doubt Mastered Materia that the First Class had left behind in his desertion. File-by-file Reeve began to take things out of the box, and Cloud pulled the file that was labeled as the SOLDIER's service history towards himself to read. Yuffie reached for the Materia boxes, but Reeve smacked her, actually _smacked _her wrist like a child and gave her a withering look. She stuck her tongue out at him, but grabbed the research documents folder and a folder apparently full of inquiries as to his descendants and relatives and went to go sit down across from Vincent. The ninja looked between the two folders for a moment before handing the inquiries to the gunman and keeping the research documents for herself. Reeve slid the sealed will down the conference table to the ShinRa lawyer, and then settled down with the public medical history.

"He had a wing." Yuffie said after just a few moments, setting the manila folder she held down on the table and pointing to the picture that was paper clipped to a few documents titled Project G. "He had a big freakin' white _wing_! Dude!" Down the table, Cloud nodded his acknowledgement, as though he had known all along that the man had had a wing like Sephiroth had. In a shuffle of papers the lawyer was reading the will with a careful eye, flicking at the corner of the woefully small packet of only two or three pages with a sausage-like thumb.

"In the event of my death in the field or by other means, natural or otherwise, the sword entitled 'Buster Sword' is to be given to SOLDIER First Class Zachariah Alexander Fair, as a service sword as well as a burden of honor." The lawyer read aloud, eyebrows furrowing together to make one long oily line. "Besides a few paragraphs on who gets his Wutain Bonsai tree collection, all his salary being redirected to his parents in Banora and his Huskies being given to a Second Class Private named Ortho Kinnicks for care, that's it. If you're looking for clues as to this supposed Remnant in his will, there's nothing."

"He saved two girls from a burning building when he was a Second Class." Cloud chimed in, reading from the SOLDIER's service record. "They would be old enough now to be the girl, and have a hero-worship case for him."

"Was his return during the Genesis Incident classified?" Vincent asked, setting down the formal inquiries and laying his clawed hand back on the table. At the looks of confusion from the faces around the table, raised eyebrows scattered among them, he nodded. "I'll take that as a yes. We've got a count we can call her on."

"There anything else in the box?" Yuffie asked, standing up and leaning over and down the table to pull at the box with outstretched fingers. "All the pictures in my file are in black and white. I want some color already!" She finally got a hold of the cardboard edge and tugged, sitting back down and tilting it so she could see inside better. The Materia cases rattled and smacked against each other, and Vincent shot the ninja a warning glance that she gave him a face for. "Hey, Reeve, you missed an envelope!" She said, reaching in and pulling out a somewhat-large crinkled and yellowed envelope from where it was stuck halfway under one of the cardboard slats in the bottom. It had a distinct line along the center of it, like there was a pencil or a stick inside. Without any care for the paper envelope Yuffie tore into her find, ripping off the top flap and digging inside with an increasing look of confusion.

"What is it?" The lawyer asked, making an attempt to stand up only to realize that he was somewhat wedged into his conference chair. "There's no envelope besides the will listed in my inventory of that box." Yuffie's eyes went wide as she got her fingers around the shaft of the object in the envelope, and she tugged it out with a flourish. In the electric lighting it was like a flash of white and blue, bright and dazzling and utterly angelic-looking. The feather was a massive pinion, not quite as large as a Bolt Plume or anywhere near the size of a Condor's pinions, but still bigger than the feathers of any white bird that anyone at the table had ever seen. It was crushed in places, bent in others, but the white of the feather was still brilliant. In what shadow there was on the white pinion the surface was a gradated blue, not gray like any other white plume would be.

"He had a big white wing." Reeve said, utterly impressed at the size of the feather and the beauty of it. Cloud nodded, the same amount of impassive that he always was. Yuffie blinked suddenly, and twisted the feather around so that the blue gradated from one end of the white pinion to the other in studding shades. She did that several times over, then held it up just so that in her field of vision it cut across Cloud's neck.

"She knew he had the wing." The ninja finally said, sure of herself. "She said she wore her ribbon, a big white one that shines this _exact_ shade of blue, for Angeal Hewley. With everything else she knows, this isn't a coincidence."

"You have probable cause to suspect her for at least being a security risk of some kind." The lawyer chimed in, having finally pulled himself out of the chair. "Now, I was pulled out of an arraignment court to oversee this. If you're all done?" Reeve nodded his consent, and the lawyer made his tottering way back out of the conference room doors.

"You're being observant today." Cloud finally said, giving Yuffie a look. She smiled widely and perched the big white pinion behind one ear, then laced her fingers behind her head and leaned back.

"I'm always this observant. I'm a ninja, Spike, I'm supposed to be." The black-haired Kunoichi turned her attention to Reeve, who was shuffling through the papers in front of him still. "So can we go after her yet?" She asked, her voice high and happy.

"I'll get a judge to get a warrant for her arrest- before you say it, just because I'm the Director of the WRO doesn't mean I'm above the law. None of you are going after her without that warrant."

* * *

"Zoltar!" A week easily passed again, simple and without incident besides a newspaper caught on fire when Chyrin had attempted to cook dinner. But then someone came storming through the front doors of _Zoltar's Materia'n'Stuff _that the teen figured she would never see again. It was Dr. Richard Kreshent, the one whose delivery had gotten her glowing green eyes for a while and a bullet almost put in her head by Barrett Wallace for her trouble. "Zoltar, I need my war hammer!" Zoltar, to his credit, poked his head out of the back room with a sleepy expression on his face. When his eyes met the red hair and green eyes of the panicked-looking doctor at the front register, they lost all the residual sleep and he quickly ducked back into the back room.

"You know Zoltar?" Gene looked up from his cartoons and his celery stick to look at the young doctor. Distractedly, the redhead nodded and waved vaguely. Chyrin echoed the sentiment of her employer's younger brother- though she hadn't been paying much attention when the doctor had ordered his Knights of the Round she had been under the impression that Zoltar and Richard didn't know each other.

"My girlfriend is your first cousin on your mom's side." Richard said, shooting a small smile to the kid before turning his attention to the returning shopkeeper. Zoltar hauled a massive hammer over his shoulder, with a long black handle and head with huge silver bands encompassing it at various intervals. Chyrin had seen the massive hammer before, propped up in the corner of the back room with a few strips of caution tape tied around the handle. She had asked once why it was there and not out on the floor, asked if it was by chance Zoltar's personal weapon, but he had shook his head and said that it was being held for someone who didn't need it anymore until they did again.

"What's the emergency?" Zoltar asked, carefully flipping the hammer over to offer the handle to the redheaded doctor. Richard's eyes turned a shade of green that was like venom in the light, narrowing as he looked at the hammer's head. His grip was white-knuckled around the handle.

"Lindsey went missing." He ground out, and Chyrin blinked in surprise as Zoltar adopted a look like he was about to punch something. "I got back to the apartment and it looked like someone ransacked it. I thought she would be okay, Zoltar. We've got a member of AVALANCHE in the building, for crying out loud, and she's the best White Mage on the continent."

"Do you know who took her?" Chyrin could only watch, like a spectator in a macabre tennis match, as the two men shot back and forth at each other with anger and determination in their voices. "A note, a clue?" This was Lindsey Komlin they were talking about, a celebrated White Mage that really did know what the hell she was doing. In fact, she was one of the best. The teen was rather mystified as to how the woman had been captured.

"Nothing. I'm going to the WRO next, they might be able to help. If they don't then I'm packing up and heading out to find her." Zoltar reached out and clapped Richard on the shoulder, enough force behind the motion that the young-looking man could have been knocked over if it wasn't for the fact that his war hammer balanced it out.

"You had better find her, Rich. She'll never forgive you if you don't, let alone my aunt." Dr. Kreshent nodded once, resolute, and made his way towards the door. With a jingle he was gone, down the road in the direction of the WRO building. Zoltar clenched a fist on the glass display case that served as the front counter, closing his eyes and looking down at the scuffed surface.

"Zoltar?" Chyrin finally asked, unsure. Her sword jingled at her belt as she walked towards her employer, not too sure as to what to do in a situation like this. "Hey, man, you okay?"

"Go home, Chyrin." He finally said, his teeth clenched. "Take the rest of the day off. Maybe tomorrow too, maybe the rest of the week. I've got a lot of..." The Costa del Solian man paused for a moment, and pushed himself up to stand straight with his arms at his sides. "I've got a lot of calls to make, and family to find." Chyrin offered her boss a smile and a nod, and pulled off her apron to reveal her zip-up sleeveless sweater and secondhand black SOLDIER pants with her Super Ribbon tied securely around her neck. She sat it on the hook it usually hung on behind the counter, squeezed past her boss to punch her timecard out, and then flipped the sign on the door to 'CLOSED' as she left the store with a jingle.

It was only just barely noon on a Thursday, and the teen had plenty of time to get home. Her mother wasn't expecting her anywhere near soon, and the baby-sized woman had plenty of Chocob-O's and Cap'n Cactuars within easy reach in addition to knowing how to work the TV remote. So Chyrin walked at a leisurely pace towards her apartment, her SOLDIER boots making no sound as she moved. With every step the Auto Silence on her sword jingled, and she got a few funny looks for it. It was, after all, unusual to see anyone with a sword in this city. Not many people adventured anymore. But she wasn't bothered by anyone, and the walk back to the apartment was nice and quiet and simple.

The apartment building's staircase door was propped open when she got there. Upon further inspection it wasn't propped open but hanging slightly, stuck on a broken top and bottom hinge at a slightly funny angle. A few black feathers and scratches decorated the entirety of the door, like something had forced it open and used claws in the process. A man on the second floor owned a large black falcon, it had probably managed to get out. Served the guy right since the bird was less than legal in that part of Edge. With a massive sigh the teen pushed the door open a bit farther and began making her way up towards her floor. Black feathers littered the staircase, and there were a few dented handrails like the bird had flailed everywhere in its apparently successful attempt at freedom.

With wide eyes, Chyrin stopped at the landing below hers. What laid in her path was certainly not a falcon feather. It was far to large, far too glossy and a deep ebony that you simply didn't find in the exotic-looking birds that abounded on the main continents. The pinion was almost as big as her forearm, perfectly straight and long and beautiful. Carefully, with slightly-shaking fingers, the teen picked up the feather by its end. It was surprisingly light and perfectly balanced. This wasn't your normal feather. Chyrin broke into a run up the last set of stairs, noting the feathers that continued despite the fact that she had left the floor with the illegal bird behind her. As she wrenched the landing door open and looked down her hall, her fears were realized. Her apartment door lay on the floor, broken glass littered all over it.

"Mom?!" She yelled, running into the apartment and surveying the damage done. The window was broken as well, the couch turned over and Chocob-O's all over the carpet. The faucet in the sink was snapped off at a funny angle, water spraying all over the toaster and making a buzzing puddle on the kitchen floor. "Mom! Mom, where are you?!" Quickly becoming frantic, Chyrin bolted to the bedroom and looked inside. The sheets had been torn off of her bed, white down from her comforter dusting every surface. A framed picture of the Forgotten City she had gotten at a little antiques shop was smashed on the dresser, and one of the closet doors was hanging at a funny angle. The bathroom was much the same, the sink bent down and spraying water all over the wall and the shower curtain ripped from the rod.

The distress on Chyrin's face quickly became anger. She stood in the middle of her ransacked apartment, the massive black pinion clenched in one hand as she tried to resist the urge to pull out her sword and slash anything and everything that was left to little pieces. Someone was messing with her. More than that, someone was actually attempting to goad her into something, anything, trying to draw her out. She had done nothing, nothing unless it was Lamaida's doing. The shaft of the black pinion snapped with an audible crunch as the teen clenched her fist around it, crushing the feather with a white-knuckled grip. If it was her, that bitch was going to pay. If it wasn't, if the pinion wasn't just from an escaped bird and someone had taken her mother... That wasn't a pretty thought.

* * *

Walking five miles to the WRO headquarters in high heels was one thing, but running the distance during rush hour was the kind of thing that got you killed. Chyrin didn't even stop for crosswalks as she ran, barely dodging and weaving around cars and motorcyclists that were all yelling at her back. But she didn't hear them, practically _couldn't _hear them, over the rush of blood in her ears and the need for air in her lungs that she just couldn't obey because she needed to run. So she did, just barely slowing down to grab lamp posts and stop signs and hurtle herself around them to make tighter turns. The black pinion was crushed in her fist, glinting a dozen different colors in light but pitch black otherwise.

Through the sliding glass doors and into the cool lobby of the WRO building, Chyrin ran. She hit the front desk with a massive bang, leaning for a moment before holding on with a death-like grip. She dropped the massive black feather onto the secretary's keyboard, the crushed bit slowly regaining its perfect shape. The woman reeled back in alarm, her rolling chair nearly falling backwards.

"Someone's taken my mother. Feathers like these were everywhere when I got home. Window broken, door in the hall, everything completely ransacked." Chyrin gasped for breath, leaning heavily on the desk. The receptionist rolled back forwards and picked up the feather, carefully hitting a button under the desk to call security with her knee.

"Missing persons can only act after twenty-four hours." The woman said levelly, laying the feather that had nearly fixed itself back on the desk in front of the teen. "And without proof that she's missing we still can't act. Have you been contacted, or do you think she managed to get away?" Chyrin began to fume at the woman, biting back sarcasm and anger in favor of a level tone laced with malice.

"She was the victim of an unfortunate bit of magic that has left her in the incurable form of a year-old _toddler _for the better part of a year. She doesn't age, she can't reach the sink, can't get to the phone. She couldn't have gotten away." With a blink, the teen realized that several white-uniformed WRO guards were headed her way. Did they not _get _it? Her mother was missing!

"Even in the extenuating circumstances I can only direct you to the Public Safety offices, on the fifth floor and third door on your left." The receptionist was making frantic eye movements towards the teen at one of the guards, and he began moving across the foyer of the large building a bit faster.

Did nobody get it? There was a toddler-sized woman out there that didn't know what the world was really like and had been taken by someone, or some_thing _that could be doing just about anything to her. This wasn't your average kidnapping case, Minerva dammit, this was much more than that. There were very few people in the world that had black wings the size needed to make the pinion that Chyrin now clenched in her hand again, and even fewer monsters. In fact, there probably wasn't a single giant black bird on the entire Planet. There were, however, men with big black wings.

The train of thought gave Chyrin an idea. It wasn't a particularly good one, hell it was probably the stupidest one she could have possibly come up with at the time. But there was security closing in fast to probably either escort her out of the building or put her in the WRO equivalent of the hoosegow, and she needed an audience with someone who could do _something _about the situation and she needed it _now_. So she acted on the stupid idea, no matter how extremely stupid she thought it to be.

"Do you not _get _it?" She whined, putting her overly-emotional teenage Remnant impression into full effect. Kadaj, eat your heart out. "Because I don't _think_ you do!" With a flourish of the feather in her hand and a yank of her other hand, the brown wig came off and her silver hair fell around her face and shoulders in a bright wave that caught the fluorescent lights above. The receptionist, along with a lot of the rest of the lobby, gave a collective gasp in shock, and in the background someone screamed. "My _mother _is missing, and someone needs to help me find her!"

That was about when she got tackled to the ground by four different security personnel.

* * *

**I've been waiting to write that last scene for about six months. Plot's finally kicking up! Now how to continue it is the question...**

**Don't you just love legal terms? I love them too. That's why I wrote in a lawyer, and Reeve being awesome-smart like that. **

**And I love that "pop a claw" line I gave Yuffie. I didn't even realize I had written it until I was looking for something to Vincent to say, so I went back over the conversation before and was like "Dude, Vincent's not Wolverine..." then realized I could work with it. PLUS I LOVE FEATHERS HARDCORE.  
**

**PFFFF Zachariah Alexander Fair. I love that middle name. And that first name. I basically just love this fic. So yeah, like always just review plzthx.  
**


	18. And I Shall Call It Ed

**The Loveless**

_Lt. Commander Richie_

**Disclaimer: **WOO I OWN FFVII AND ALL AFFILIATED! Wait, what? This is a dream? Don't be silly, Zack in swimming trunks. Why on earth would I be dreaming? You, speedo-clad redhead with freckles, thigh-high boots, eyepatch and sexy abs. _Yes_ you, Lavi. Pass that delicious pot roast. Grimmjow! Grell! Come pamper me. No, Grell, you can't rape him. Yes, you can do my nails. Angeal, would you pour me another cup of tea?

_Chapter 18

* * *

_

"You idiots could have put me in a hospital!" To say that Chyrin Renton was fuming would be a bit of an understatement. She was pacing around her cell, for one, occasionally kicking walls and doors and basically anything else she could put a boot print on. "You coulda killed me! Four guys on one little teenager? I am not a linebacker and you are not quarterbacks!" She was also yelling, and screaming herself hoarse, and sticking her tongue out at the surveillance camera in the corner every chance she got. "I want my sword back! Do you have any idea how long it took me to save up for it?! If you hurt it I swear to Minerva that I'll come after you in your sleep! You know why I have an Auto Silence on that thing?! So nobody can hear you _SCREAM_!"

"Shut up already!" One of her guards banged on the door, an annoyed tone to his voice. "You're not getting out and you're not getting the sword back!"

"_You_ shut up!" Chyrin shot back, her voice beginning to quaver. "I just want my mother back! Someone's taken her and she's got some kind of spell on her that turned her into a talking baby, and- and-" the day, in its entirety of events, finally came crashing down on the poor teen. She sank to the floor in the middle of her cell and clutched at her knees, burying her face into them as she whined and sniffed in an attempt to not cry. But eventually the tears broke through and she sobbed as quietly as she could into her knees and crossed arms. Her confinement since around noon was simply becoming too much, especially at this time at night. She was tired, she hurt, she was hungry and she just wanted her mother.

Her idea had definitely been a stupid one. She didn't want to end up in a cell, didn't want to be stuck explaining herself while someone was making off with her mother. But now they thought she meant Jenova, now she was sure to be killed or at least thrown into the Lifestream so nobody would get their hands dirty on her. She would die of Mako poisoning and drown in a world that wasn't even hers. Sure it was her idea for people to think she was a Remnant, but she didn't expect the bruised ribs and nearly-crushed trachea that had come with it.

Behind the video camera in the corner, down a bunch of wires to the monitors that the surveillance connected to, AVALANCHE watched. Reeve and Yuffie sat in rolling chairs in front of the monitor bay, Cloud, Tifa and Barrett directly behind them. Cid sat on a table, an unlit cigarette clenched between his teeth. Cait Sith sat on top of Nanaki's head, braiding the mane there with mitten-covered paws. Vincent leaned against the back wall, his arms crossed in silence. The girl on the monitors didn't move except to occasionally shake, and the video was silent since Yuffie had muted the girl's rantings long ago.

"Was the feather his?" Tifa finally asked, torn between concern for the apparently distraught girl and righteous fuming that they had managed to miss a Remnant of Sephiroth.

"Has someone come in and given me the lab results since you last asked?" Reeve asked, turning around in his rolling office chair. Yuffie snickered, and spun twice in her own chair. The dark monitor room was getting to be a bit boring, the silence becoming just a little more pressing every minute that inched by. At least it had been entertaining when the Remnant was kicking things and swearing everything and everyone she could black and blue.

"Maybe someone should actually go talk to her." Nanaki suggested, finally shaking Cait Sith off of his back before settling down to the floor. The suggestion was met with shouts of disapproval from multiple people around the room, and the orange wolf-lion rolled his one good eye and laid his head on the cold metal floor. "I'm only saying, she looks like she doesn't know what's going on anymore. That cell isn't rated to hold someone with First-Class strength, with all the kicking she's been doing there should be dents in the walls. Maybe she's just a scared girl that used prematurely gray hair to her disadvantage. Her mother could actually be missing."

"But why hide it with a wig, then? If it's just prematurely gray hair, then what's to fear?" Tifa asked, stepping forward and leaning in to look at the monitors closer.

"Exactly this reaction." Nanaki said, his voice steely. "I'm not saying we're wrong. I'm simply saying that maybe we should look at more than her hair and a few circumstantial words before passing judgment."

"Well I ain't dealin' with 'er." Cid piped up, his cigarette waving up and down as he spoke. "An' I ain't eaten since breakfast. Anyone want anythin'?" Nobody asked for anything, so the pilot jumped to his feet and headed for the door. "'Ey, where's the vendin' machine?" He paused at the door, since he was unfamiliar with the cell block levels of the WRO building. He was much more at ease above the ground level, and the higher up in the building the better.

"Vinnie, show him where the guard shift breakroom is, would ya?" Yuffie spun around once in her chair, then stuck a foot out to stop herself as she looked around the room in confusion. "Vinnie? Where'd ya go?"

* * *

The amount of guards outside the littlecell door was either an exorbitant amount of overkill or it was an extremely understaffed force. Five men in white and red uniform stood around the cell door, only two of them without guns aimed directly at it. It was dreadfully quiet in the hallway, the light all around tinting everything a slight shade of uncomfortable blue. One of the guards jumped slightly as a the scraping click of metal-on-metal began penetrating the silence. It was in the beat of footsteps, long strides that could really only belong to one person. The two without their guns trained on the door snapped to a tighter attention than they had been before, gulping nearly in unison as Vincent Valentine turned the corner in a cloud of red tatters and black leather.

"Sir!" They both called out, insanely afraid. The entirety of the guard unit was all pretty sure that the gunman hadn't forgiven them for the stuffed and mounted animals that he had gotten for his birthday. The guard to the left of the door blinked in confusion as he realized that the AVALANCHE member was holding a tray of food in one steady hand.

"Stand down." The black-haired man ordered, coming to a stop in front of the door. The three guards with guns trained at the door immediately stood at attention with their guns pointed twards the ceiling.

"Sir, we can't-" The guard stopped short as he realized just who it was he was saying that couldn't go in the cell because it was too dangerous. "Our guard shift manager says we're not allowed to let you in, sir."

"Well then," Vincent began, and then something particularly scary happened. He offered something that looked just the smallest bit like a smirk over the collar of his cloak. Both of the guards he faced felt like they were about to die. "_I'm_ allowing you. Now stand down and let me through."

"Yes sir." One of the guards answered, and fished the key card from his belt and swiped it through the card lock next to the door. It hissed open, revealing the little lump of teenage girl with silver hair that still hugged her knees. She didn't look up as he entered, and certainly didn't look up as the door closed again. He stood still for a moment, just inside the closed door, and silence took back over the cell.

"Vincent Valentine." She finally said, not moving in the least. Her knees were tucked up to her chest, her head was tucked onto the top of her knees and her arms were crossed around them. "Did they send you because they figured you for indestructible?"

"Who are you, really?" The girl finally looked up, fine silver hair swishing this way and that and falling onto one half of her face like a curtain. She peered out from underneath it with a wide-eyed gaze, her fine silver eyebrows arching up as far as they would go as she registered just what it was that the AVALANCHE member was holding.

"I'm exactly what my ID says I am. My name is Chyrin Renton, I'm sixteen, my hair is brown and my eyes are brown. I'm six feet tall. I own a double-bladed katana that I haven't named yet, but I'm kinda thinking of calling it Ed. It's purple and has flowers and little gems on it and an Auto Silence. I work at _Zoltar's Materia'n'Stuff_, and at least one of my ribs might be bruised." The teen paused, and looked back down at her knees for a moment. "And someone with a big black wing broke into my apartment and stole my mom."

"Your hair definitely isn't brown from where I'm standing." If Chyrin found it funny, she certainly didn't laugh. She huffed a sigh and stretched out her legs on the cold metal floor, then crossed them. She leaned her elbows on her knees and adopted a horrible hunched-over posture.

"I wasn't born with silver hair. Don't have any tattoos either." The teen gave a sigh, and she seemed to sink lower into herself. Suddenly her stomach rumbled, extremely loud in the quiet room. Wordlessly, Vincent walked forward and sat the tray down in front of her. It was a sloppy-looking burger with some kind of sauce and unidentifiable meat. But it was still food, and it still looked pretty appetizing. But the silver-haired girl wasn't looking at the sandwich, instead she was fascinated by the hand that had delivered it. Specifically, the hand in a bright and shiny golden gauntlet that had delivered it.

"There aren't a lot of people with black wings." Chyrin nodded her assent, and then picked up the burger and bit into it. It wasn't the greatest cafeteria food she had ever had, but it was better than nothing. She chewed and swallowed, then promptly scarfed the rest of the burger as though it would disappear.

"Sephiroth is dead for good unless there are more Jenova parts floating around. There aren't, are there?" She asked as soon as she had finished her burger and wiped the sauce from her lips. Vincent shook his head, the motion oddly noiseless despite the mane of black hair and the cloak. "Then it was Genesis Rhapsodos. Figures, too. It's not like he actually died in Banora." Chyrin stood, allowing a small smile to come to her lips at the fact that she was in the same room as the one and only Vincent Valentine. But then it fell, becoming sad. "I just want my mom back, you know? She got something cast on her a while back that turned her into a talking baby. She can't fend for herself in the slightest. I tried using Morph Materia on her once to see if it was just a random accident, but it didn't work. I don't want anything to do with Ancient space mummies or summoning a giant space rock, or even taking over the world. I just want her back."

"I understand." Vincent nodded, and Chyrin looked up from where she had been staring a hole in the floor to stare straight at him. "Though I was under the impression that Genesis Rhapsodos died in Modeoheim by throwing himself into the Lifestream inside a Mako reactor." He paused, his weight shifting from one foot to the other in a surprising display of normalcy that the teen hadn't expected from him. "At least, that's what the official records say."

"And you trust ShinRa's official records?" Chyrin let out something that sounded a bit like a laugh, and scratched at her neck underneath the blue-white silk Super Ribbon tied there. "Here's something you may or may not know. Genesis was taken by Deepground after he was supposedly killed by Zack Fair in Banora, right before Zack Fair himself was killed. Deepground saved his life, and those Deepground bastards are hard as hell to kill. Genesis Rhapsodos has my mother, and he has a very alive and possibly very healed Weiss the Immaculate as well. I don't know what they're planning, but you can bet it won't be pretty."

* * *

"Can I have Ed back?" The guard on the inside of the interrogation room door eyed her suspiciously, an eyebrow raising. "When Cloud comes in here and jumps at me sword-first I kinda want something to defend myself."

"You're not getting the sword back." The guard said, fixing her with one of the looks that basically everyone had been giving her since she had gotten there. Chyrin slumped in her seat, but then readjusted her position because it had made her arms bend at a funny angle because of the three pairs of handcuffs and the restraints around her upper arms. She also had them around her legs, and she'd been liberated of any and all weapons before she had been put in the little room. They had even taken her DMW for the love of Minerva, and that couldn't do any damage except if you chucked it at someone's head.

"C'mon, man, I saved for three months to get that sword, even _with _employee discount. It's my baby! You can't just let me die at the hands of a Chocobo head, can you?" The guard grasped at his temples in frustration as Chyrin continued to ramble nervously. At some point she managed to get her legs gathered up to her chest in the chair, and she leaned forward and put her chin on her knees. She continued to talk, her attention turning to Chocobo racing and the toils of attempting to catch a Chocobo.

"Shut up already!" The guard finally yelled, slamming a hand onto the wall with enough force that the table almost rattled. Chyrin fell silent, tears welling up in large brown eyes with amazing force. She buried her eyes into her knees, though, and didn't make a sound or even move. She stayed like that until the door to the interrogation room was opened, and continued to not move until after it was closed again. And then she was alone in a room with Cloud Strife while handcuffed more times than necessary and stuck in a chair because of it. A beat of silence passed between them. Chyrin let out a sudden honking snore and shuffled in her seat, apparently asleep even in the strange position she was in. The blond dropped the silver-haired girl's DMW onto the table with a clatter and she jolted awake.

Brown sleep-crusted and inquisitive eyes met sky-blue and glowing Mako-enhanced ones. Chyrin made a noise that kind of sounded like a small and frightened yappy dog and jerked backwards. The chair she was sitting in promptly fell backwards and she hit the ground hard and swore.

"Sweet _Holy_!" She bit out, struggling to get off of the chair or at least make the handcuffs and restraints that were biting into her upper arms stop hurting so damn much. "Ugh, sonnuvahbetch." She continued to wriggle, but when she didn't get anywhere she grumbled and laid back on the rather uncomfortable chair and looked up at the ceiling with a sour expression. "Little help here?"

"Why are Vincent and I in your DMW?" Chyrin blinked up at the ceiling, and stretched her legs out so that they hung over the bottom of the chair and hooked in the bar across the legs. She sighed, and settled into her spot on the floor. She would be there for a while.

"I dunno. If you notice, my employer and a somewhat-annoying woman by the name of Lareth Kingsley are also in there. I'm pretty sure one of my summons is Shiva, and another one is Alexander, and another one is Hades, judging by silhouettes. I haven't the foggiest as to who that last person is, but all my specials are stupid things too. I've only ever used each Limit Break once, just to figure out what they are. My personal one is a piddly stupid little thing called Doom Slash that does twice the damage to the opposition as I last suffered. It kinda sucks, though, because I can only fight piddly-ass monsters right now." Chyrin paused, and craned her neck to just barely see Cloud's face over her knees and the edge of the table. "Have I answered all your questions, asked and unasked? Can I have my sword back?"

"You can't have the sword back." Cloud deadpanned, before sighing as Chyrin began to struggle again and walking over to her side. The blond looked down at the silver-haired girl with a stoic face, taking in the teen's strange appearance. She looked like a kid playing make-believe as a SOLDIER, with maybe a few personal touches thrown in for good measure. Her boots were dirty and worn, her pants had a few threadbare patches where she had probably fallen on her knees or spent a lot of time on them, and her shirt was a little worse for wear. The ribbon around her neck, though, was pristine and uncreased, even though it was in a double-knotted bow. Brown eyes blinked up at him owlishly, and Cloud heaved a sigh before reaching down and grabbing the back of the chair and hauling it upright.

"Why not?" Chyrin asked, raising an eyebrow at the AVALANCHE leader that had walked back and taken the seat across the interrogation table from her. "I wouldn't use it on a human, I'm not that stupid. I'm not even that good with it yet."

"Barrett said you could deflect bullets with it." The teen narrowed her eyes at the man across from her, wishing for all the world that she could get her hands out of the cuffs so she could smack him upside the head.

"I used to live in the old Midgar Slums, ya know? I got stalked by a Sweeper for a while and I learned pretty damn quick how to dodge and deflect bullets." Chyrin sighed and slumped into her knees, which she had drawn to her chest again. "Listen dude, I don't want any trouble. I just want my mum back. I don't want any pieces of Jenova- _hell_, I don't even want my hair this color, hence the wig. But Genesis Rhapsodos has my mum, and she's all I have in this world in the way of family." The silver haired teen shook her head, and bits of hair fell in her face like a small curtain. She blew on it until it was out of her face again. "Will you help me? Please?" Cloud paused, his arms crossed over his chest and the two ribbons he wore just barely shining in the fluorescent light.

"We'll see." He finally said, and leaned forward and stood up out of his seat. "No promises. Reeve's still running your genetics against the Remnants. If you have any Jenova cells in you, you're not leaving the cell block for a very long time." Chyrin smiled at him, wide and with teeth. He didn't understand how she could be so happy in the situation she had gotten herself into.

"You're a hero, you know that?" Cloud paused as he turned to leave, but then continued towards the door.

"I still don't have any dreams." He shot over his shoulder, trying to end the conversation in an attempt to leave the room and the girl that was just a little too optimistic for her own good.

"But you followed the ones you had and protected your honor. I'm pretty sure that could be considered a hero." Cloud gave her a look over his shoulder, then went through the interrogation room door and closed it with a snap.

Halfway down the hall, he resolved to go find her sword and consider bringing it back to her.

* * *

**WOAH ANOTHER CHAPTER, DOOOOOOOOOOOD~**

**Harbl, harbl FFVII. You're cutting into my other fandoms. Yet I love it sooooo~**

**Reviews are loved, just so you all know. I don't have a lot to say this time.  
**


	19. Date, Interrupted

**The Loveless**

_Lt. Commander Richie_

**Disclaimer: **LOLNO. Owning FFVII would be nice, yes, but I'd rather make a killing off something funny. Like being a stand-up comic. Not that I'm funny or anything, but it's a dream.

_Chapter 19

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_

"He might be in Banora." Chyrin Renton was having a very hard time trying not to scream and flail like the teenage fantard she was. She was seated at a conference table with the entirety of AVALANCHE. Yes, she had her hands handcuffed in front of her; yes one ankle was handcuffed to a chair leg. But she had slept for six hours and had been given an okay breakfast, she had her newly-christened Ed back and she was in an uncomfortable conference room chair stuck between Barrett Wallace and Cid Highwind. Across from her sat Tifa Lockhart and Nanaki with Cait Sith on his head.

"What makes you say that?" Reeve sat at the head of the table, his chin resting on steepled fingers held up by elbows on the table. "Genesis was reported to have died in Modeoheim along with Angeal Hewley. Jumped into the Lifestream inside a Mako reactor."

"And we all know that people with wings _die_ when they jump into the Lifestream in a Mako reactor. Angeal Hewley was the only one that died at Modeoheim, Zack Fair mortally wounded Genesis Rhapsodos in Banora after he escaped from incarceration in Nibelheim. Weiss the Immaculate and Nero the Sable saved Genesis' life, and then more recently Genesis saved Weiss' life after Mr. Valentine left him for dead." Chyrin sat her handcuffed arms on the table, but didn't dare lean onto them because she didn't have enough room between the two AVALANCHE members that were no doubt really there to make sure she didn't do anything stupid since nobody trusted her even the slightest yet. "Banora is a Lifestream pit just like Mideel, at least so far as I last heard. ShinRa called an air strike on the place a while back and blew it to hell. Thing is, though, that Genesis is mad-obsessed with Minerva, Goddess of the Planet. She appeared to him in a vision there, so I'm betting that's where he'll go. There's a whole series of underground caverns and lakes down below the destruction."

"How do you know all this?" Tifa asked, an eyebrow raising at the girl across from her. Though she was supposedly still a teenager, the girl with hair like spun silver was easily taller than and as wide in the shoulders as Cid. Chyrin shrugged, then used her handcuffed hands to tuck her silver bangs behind one ear in such a normal motion that it surprised the martial artist. Then she was silent for a moment, before adopting a look of concentration.

"I found a bunch of ShinRa files at a library here in Edge. It was when I first came here, so I didn't know my way around and I got really, really lost. I found a library and tried looking for a map I could use to get back home, but I found the files instead and they were a lot more interesting." Chyrin paused, pursing her lips before leaning back in her seat and setting her hands on her lap. "I wouldn't have the foggiest as to how to get there again, though."

"That's not the issue here, though." Nanaki finally spoke, and everyone around the table could see a visible change in Chyrin as he did so. The girl suddenly had a light in the brown eyes that had formerly been little more than dull. "It's that Genesis is alive, and he has Weiss the Immaculate. To an extent, he has Hojo as well." Vincent suddenly bit out a swear, his clawed hand nearly digging into the wood conference table before he realized it. The silver-haired girl giggled in a way that really didn't suit her, a bubbly laugh like someone half her size and age might have. She quickly quieted as the entire table fixed her with glares. Reeve's PHS suddenly beeped, and he dug it out of a pocket and flipped it open in curiosity. He read something that evidently been sent to him, then flipped it shut and stowed it in his pocket, then pulled a key from the same pocket and set it on the table.

Chyrin knew that key. Specifically, she knew what that key unlocked. That key was her little shiny golden key of hope. The Reeve had it out on the table meant he was probably going to try and reason with her, cut a deal maybe, or simply set her loose. She was really, really, really hoping for the very latter option.

"According to my techs, miss Renton, you are completely and absolutely free of anything ShinRa and biological. A little Mako in your system, but breathing the air in this city does that to you. You've got nothing Jenova-related or otherwise." At the hopeful look on the girl's face, Reeve sighed and continued. "You're not a Remnant of Sephiroth, so our warrant for your arrest is now invalid. You're totally free to go." Without another word the Director of the WRO slid the little key down the table. Chyrin lunged for it, afraid that any one person around the table would grab it before she did. Her fingers closed around the little metal object and she laughed, sitting back in her seat as she twisted her wrists in an attempt to get her hands out of the cuffs. She got one off after just a moment, then pulled the other off and then leaned down and got the one off of her ankle.

"Thank ya kindly, sir." The teen said, getting up and stretching her arms apart in an attempt to get her back to stay straight. "Now what about finding my mum? Results come back on that ass-big feather I brought with me?" Several people around the table looked at the girl like she was a bit more than nuts, unsure where to begin decoding that statement. "Come on, I know it's not a black Chocobo feather, Chocobo pinions don't even get that big. Since Sephiroth's dead then it's Genesis'."

"However, miss Renton, we have another warrant here for your arrest based on the fact that you're a severe security leak concerning classified documents that were destroyed by ShinRa years before you apparently moved to Edge." From another pocket, Reeve pulled a tri-folded piece of paper and set it on the conference table. Chyrin huffed a sigh and sat down, crossing her arms and setting her feet on the table. Cid and Barret both gave her withering looks, but she shrugged them off. "Now, care to tell us just how it is you _really _know all this?"

"I come from a parallel dimension where every event of the past forty years in this world is part of the historical base of a series of video games called Final Fantasy Seven, all of which I have played and memorized." The silver haired girl deadpanned, raising an eyebrow at the Director in a way that made him feel almost juvenile despite the fact that the girl that was doing the staring was probably a third of his age. She paused, and then put on a surprised face. "Oh, did you want the _truth_?"

"We would prefer it, yes." Vincent said, his tone equally deadpan. Chyrin smiled and lowered her sardonic eyebrow.

"My Grumma used to file things for ShinRa. Real classified things, ya know? So she'd read 'em, write some stuff down, make a photocopy or two, then come home and tell the whole family." The silver-haired girl shrugged like it was a normal thing, her voice noncommittal. "I never really figured the stuff to be classified since I grew up knowing it. Instead of the Nayst Brothers fairytales being told to me when I was little, I got classified war operations and personal histories of ShinRa's best and brightest."

"So why did you lie when you were first asked?" Cloud asked, leaning forward onto the table so as to keep the girl in his sights at all times.

"Knee-jerk reaction. In my experience it's better if people hear what they want to so I don't get in trouble." Chyrin sighed and sat back up properly in the chair, leaning forward onto the table so everyone could see her. "And before you ask, no. You can't trust me. Not with your lives and definitely not with telling you the truth. You all have to decide what's a lie and what isn't." She looked around the table, her gaze finally falling on the blue-suited Reeve at the head of the table. "Now, gentlemen and ladies, I do believe you're holding me unlawfully and your second warrant is null and void. Since ShinRa is no longer an established institution and I haven't violated any contract or confidentiality agreement, you have no jurisdiction over my arrest. Besides, I promise not to tell anyone the really juicy stuff." With a jerk the teen stood, her sword jingling brightly. "Good day. Feel free to send guards after me if you think I should still be under arrest." And then she was gone out the door, headed for the elevators and ultimately the lobby.

* * *

"Eil!" Of all the people that Chyrin had thought she would see waiting for her after her night in the WRO hoosegow, she hadn't thought she would see Eil Allern. Zoltar maybe, but there he stood, a pair of silver goggles pushed up to his forehead and wearing a white insulated vest with a white fur-trimmed hood over a gray wifebeater and black jeans. His massive heavy sword was strapped to his back in a holster, Materia inset into it glinting dully in the electric lighting. Chyrin ran forward and embraced him, smiling widely. "Oh man, you have no idea how frigging annoying these people can be!"

"Did you cut and dye your hair?" The blond asked, his eyebrows furrowing and making the scar across one bright blue eye crinkle in an adorable way. The silver-haired teen sighed and stepped back, running a hand through her sleek short hair.

"It's... It's always been this way." She muttered, looking down at the tile floor. "Since dye didn't work I hid it under a wig so stuff like this wouldn't happen. People wouldn't freak out if they didn't know about it, right?" She offered the blond an apologetic smile, feeling incredibly guilty that she hadn't trusted him. If he was angry with her she wouldn't be seeing him any time soon. But instead he smiled widely at her, a hand reaching up to take a lock of hair and make it reflect the light. The hand went from her hair to the side of her face and she blushed.

"I think it looks nice." He said, his soft smile still lighting up his face. The moment was perfect, and they seemed to be getting closer, and damn if he wasn't being the perfect gentleman. But then, in a sudden deep grumble, Eil's stomach growled so loud that the both of them stopped with wide eyes. Chyrin blinked at the ruined moment, and they both looked down at his stomach. It was Eil's turn to look apologetic, scratching the back of his head with his other hand suddenly held to his apparently empty stomach. Chyrin smiled at him, giggling lightly.

"You wanna go get some MFC?" She asked, her hand over her mouth to cover her grin. "I think there's one around the corner." Eil gave her a lopsided grin, a chuckle escaping his lips.

"Is that a date?" He asked, offering one arm to the girl he faced. She smiled and looped her arm through his, and they turned for the door.

"Depends, do you want it to be?" The silver-haired girl asked as they began walking, her sword jingling with every step and hair shining in the fluorescent light. Eil laughed and nodded, pushing open one of the building's front doors with one hand to let her though.

"That'd be nice, yeah." He said, taking her arm again as they walked out onto the busy sidewalk outside the WRO's main office. They turned down the sidewalk and started heading in the direction of the nearest fast food joint.

"Going to a Midgar Fried Chocobo joint is your idea of a date?" Chyrin asked, raising one fine silver eyebrow at the blond next to her. He reciprocated with an equally-raised white-blond brow, and they both laughed.

"It is if I'm going with you!" Eil said, and they two of them laughed again as they continued on. They were just about to the corner of the block before a sudden screech rent the air. Around them, people began to scream and shout, the crowd slowly but surely beginning to look _up _and run down the street. The two teens looked around in confusion before finally looking up into the gray sky, only to be met with a sight that nobody really could ever want to see.

It was Bahamut. It was a reallyfuckinghuge black dragon covered in spines and blades and every manner of horrible things and claws. As Chyrin watched it get closer, the only thing that ran through her mind was thanking whatever Gods were watching out for her that it wasn't Neo Bahamut, Bahamut ZERO or BahamutSIN. Hell, that it wasn't Knights of the Round was a good one too. Eil reached for his sword, ready to no doubt swing it out and summon either his Mastered Hades or Alexander to fend off the giant black dragon, but he was too late.

With another roar, Bahamut fired straight into the WRO building. In an impressive explosion of blue energy and orange and red fire, the building simply seemed to vanish. Eil grabbed Chyrin and pulled her to the ground, and just in time as the cloud of debris and fire rolled down the street and right over them. It passed quickly enough, however, and the white blond-haired teen got to his feet and almost reached for his sword before he realized that it was probably a bit too hot to touch.

"Are you alright?" Chyrin asked, concerned. She tried to get around him, to look at his back where he was no doubt burnt, but he smiled and waved a hand in her face. A thick metal band around one finger with an impressive shimmering white stone set in it glinted there, and she breathed a sigh of relief. A Light Curtain ring, which had cast Barrier and kept them from getting harmed by the blast.

"I think our main concern is whether or not the people in that building are alright." They nodded at each other, and ran for the front of the WRO building... Or at least what was left of it. A screech rent the air, and both teens looked up to see that the Bahamut summon was still circling the building on its massive wings. It opened its mouth again, charging yet another blast so as to obliterate what was left of the building. There were already soldiers on the ground and airships rising into the air from the various hangars in the vicinity, but it seemed like this second blast was going to be the blast that blew what survivors there were to hell.

A black streak jumped from the rubble, a shining trail seemingly following it. It stopped at the top of one of the girders erected around the city, and Chyrin gasped. It was Cloud Strife, his First Tsurugi in hand and covered in soot! She cheered and pumped a fist into the air, watching as the rest of AVALANCHE quickly followed their leader's example. Eil pulled on her hand and she nodded, tearing her eyes away from the spectacle she would have given anything to see and heading towards the ruined building to help. Something was telling her that she would be seeing a lot more of AVALANCHE in action real soon.

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**PLOT TWIIIIIIIIIIIIIST~**

**Everything will be moving much faster now, since we're finally getting into the real plot. Genesis is on the move, and nobody trusts Chyrin. However, they can't hold her because she's right, smart and watched too much Law and Order before going to Edge. **

**Oh, and did I mention that exactly one year ago I published this fic? Because I did. **

**And I can't help but squeal over Eil Allern. Because he's just that pretty and adorable. Oh! And its not said "Ale", it's said "Isle". That's ben kicking the back of my mind since I introduced him. **

**X_X and I just got up. Forgive any stupidity on my part.**

**_- Lt. Commander Richie_  
**


	20. Ultimate End

**The Loveless**

_Lt. Commander Richie_

**Disclaimer: **Don't own it. It would be cool if I did, though, because then I could be all like "Hey, I own FFVII, stop writing bad fanfiction!" and you could all be like "No! I'm gonna write it anyway 'cause I wanna!" and I would be like "Well then I'll sue you and you can't write it anyway!" and you'd all be like "Okay, fine, we'll write better..." and then the world would be happy.

_Chapter 20 (holy shit!)_

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The WRO building looked like it had seen better days. Specifically days where it had either been a big expanse of Mako-drained land, and days when it had been a proud building. Now almost half of the building was nothing more than a crater, the other half only standing because the explosions hadn't gone as far as one would have thought. The half that Bahamut had hit was no more, only a pile of rubble with a few standing walls left. Above, that very dragon was being set upon by AVALANCHE. All around the big black creature airships fluttered, occasionally firing in an attempt to destroy it before it did more damage.

"Chyrin, help me here!" Eil was just barely struggling to lift a large slab of concrete off of a couple of buried WRO soldiers. His wiry and thin frame definitely didn't bely that amount of strength, but he still had it. Nodding in affirmation, Chyrin ducked under the slab and grabbed the two soldiers by their uniform collars in an attempt to pull them out from danger. When neither of them would move Eil gave a heave and sent the slab toppling over in the other direction.

"You have a Cure Materia?" The silver-haired girl asked, looking up at the boy with wide brown eyes full of worry. He nodded and drew his massive sword from the sheath on his back, hefting it with both hands before plunging the tip into the ground. One of the Materia slots that ran down the center of the sword began to glow a bright green, before the two soldiers began shining with purple, red and green light. As soon as it faded they both sat up, hands to their foreheads and groaning in confusion.

"Wha-" One of them began, but the other made a noise of surprise and slapped his fellow soldier on the shoulder, pointing up into the sky at the battle raging against the summoned Bahamut. They both stared for a moment before attempting to scramble to their feet and join the fray.

"Help us find survivors." Eil said firmly, and the two WRO members stopped before nodding resolutely. They began a slow trek across the rubble, jumping from piece to piece while listening carefully over the sounds and roars of battle raging above. Bullets would occasionally impact the ground around them, but nobody got hit.

Chyrin eventually resigned herself to the inevitable. The two WRO soldiers that they had rescued had been the lucky two that had probably been stationed as roof access guards. They may have been dropped a dozen floors, but they didn't have an entire building fall on top of them or Bahamut's original blast turn them to dust and then vaporize the dust in the explosion. Those two guys and AVALANCHE were probably the only survivors. The silver-haired teen sat herself down on a large chunk of cement that still had a door hanging from it and part of the metal siding still attached to it and drew her knees up to her chest and sat her chin on them. Her day, along with the days of quite a few people inside the building, had been ruined.

With a sigh she looked up into the air, watching the massive battle unfold like something straight out of Advent Children. Chyrin could make out Cloud, slashing at the beast's head. Yuffie, on an apparently borrowed hoverboard like the ones used during the assault on Midgar, was throwing things at the dragon's eyes and face with precision. Vincent and Barret were shooting it, Tifa was punching it, Nanaki was Limited Moon-ing it and Cid was stabbing it. Oddly enough, compared to some of the things she had seen before either on TV in Edge or in FFVII before she had been sucked into it, this almost looked like cake. In fact, it was almost boring to watch. It was just a bunch of people with weapons wailing on a dragon, after all.

"God dammit, Genesis. What the hell are you doing?" Chyrin muttered, burying her face into her crossed arms. Bahamut screeched loudly and something exploded, but the teen didn't move. She moaned loudly in frustration and hit the rubble she was sitting on with a clenched fist. Without warning the chunk of cement began to shift down the small hill of cement and plaster dust, and the teen jumped off and watched it as it picked up into a roll and finally came to a stop. Raising one fine silver eyebrow, the girl looked back at where the cement chunk had been to see why it was that it had fallen like that. It couldn't have been just her weight, right? She wasn't _that _heavy...

But instead she was met with the sight of a squished cardboard box. It still had the remnants of what looked like evidence tape on it, and through a hole in the side she could see something glinting. Chyrin made her way to the box and pulled it from the plaster dust and rocks that it had been half-buried in, pulling the top open and looking inside after waving the cloud of plaster dust out of her face. Inside were Materia cases. More than that, they were full of a bunch of Summon and Magic Materia, and even a Command . Chyrin's eyes went wide as she pulled each one from the box and opened each case, and significantly wider yet as she realized just how powerful each one was. They were _mastered _Materia, every last one of them.

"Woah..." The silver-haired teen breathed, her fingers ghosting over each of the seven Materia in an effort to learn just what they were. There was a Knights of the Round, a BahamutZERO, a Phoenix, a Life2, a Quake and an unidentifiable lump of purple. As soon as she touched the purple one it flashed, and the power level simply vanished. _Shit_, this was someone else's Command Materia, they were dead now and it had adapted to one of her Limit Breaks. With a certain urgency, the teen grabbed the lump of Materia as hard as she could in an effort to see just which one it had assigned itself to. However, it seemed to come up blank in her mind despite her mental grasping.

Chyrin couldn't help it. Beyond the fact that the last several days had been shit, she was currently in the middle of a war zone and she really, really wanted to hit something. For the love of Minerva, wasn't there anything she could just beat within an inch of its life?! The silver haired teen slammed a closed fist filled with bright purple Materia against her leg, but the pain did absolutely nothing to ease her anger. Acting on impulse and with a glare that could burn through the head of an Ifrit summon, Chyrin grabbed each and every last piece of Materia there and stowed them in her pockets before taking the Knights of the Round Materia from the ground and clenching it in her free fist in a white-knuckled grip. She stood and turned, focusing her rage on something that could most definitely take it- the rampant Bahamut that had yet to even so much as falter under the joint attacks being done to it.

In a sudden and very angry movement, Chyrin threw her clenched fist with the Summon in it forward. From her hand spiraled circle after circle of bright light, forming lines upon lines of arcane letters and concentric circles that hung in the air like a targeting system. She drew in a breath as far as it seemed to go, the symbols growing more numerous with every passing second. Something was going to pay, it was going to pay dearly, and it was going to pay with its measly little life.

"Destroy Bahamut! ULTIMATE," Chyrin bellowed, her voice loud and angry in a way that attracted the attention of everyone that could still stand in the rubble. An idle thought appeared to the girl as she opened her mouth for the other half of the Summon spell, and that was that she probably didn't have enough magical power to complete the Summon, let alone continue to stand after she had finished it. Oh well, too late. "_END_!"

Then, the world shattered. In a massive burst of power that shot into the sky, the ground seemed to buckle downwards underneath the dragon until it screeched in protest and was sucked under. Every type of damage and magic burst forth in rapid succession, but the unfortunate caster couldn't watch the destruction she had wrought upon the enemy Summon. No, she was too busy falling over backwards in a dead faint from magical exhaustion.

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A dull roar reached her ears, filtering through a black dream that she couldn't remember for the life of her. It was becoming louder at a steady pace, individual sounds coming from the single mass of noise to distinguish themselves what seemed like minutes after the fact in her mind. There were sirens. There were yells and the sound of large WRO trucks and the occasional airship. She wasn't laying down, and her Silence charm jingled every time she seemed to jostle. The air was cold, and it was wet, a light rain falling in the aftermath of what she now remembered was a very angry summoning of Knights of the Round. But what she was held against was warm, and she snuggled into it to the best of her ability and twined a hand into the thin fabric.

Chyrin started awake, her hand coming away from the fabric it grasped as she looked up into the sky blue eyes of one Eil Allern, who was just a little red in the face and at the tops of his ears. His white blond hair was wet, slicked down onto his forehead and cheeks, and the scar over his eye was crinkled from his smile.

"You're awake." He said, his smile not loosing any wattage as he gently set the silver-haired girl on her feet. She wobbled a bit and grabbed onto his shoulder for support, but he looked like he didn't mind.

"Obviously." Chyrin said groggily, looking around. The area was set up with tents, WRO soldiers running in every direction from tent to tent in a massive effort. It seemed like everyone had been called in to duty after her neutralization of Bahamut, whether to help with search and rescue or to assist in relief aid to those already rescued. The largest tent, one with a large red cross on it, was directly ahead of the two. "How long was I out?" The girl asked, noting the completion of many of the tents and the thoroughly wet cracked pavement.

"No more than forty five minutes, I think. Maybe fifty. I just found you, and I was gonna take ya to the medical tent, but you woke up and-" Chyrin put two fingers to the blond's lips, effectively silencing him. She flushed a little pink at the action, so did he, but there was at least a pause.

"Where's AVALANCHE?" She asked, looking around at the mass of tents that were no doubt serving as the WRO's current Main Office. "We've got to get in an airship and head for Banora, and we gotta do it now." Without warning her fingers left his lips and had his wrist, and she was running full-tilt through the drizzle to a large tent with guards posted at the entrance. Eil pulled her to a stop, and the silver-haired girl spun around to face him with confusion in her eyes.

"What's going on, Chyrin?" He asked, confused. She blinked wide brown eyes in confusion, her silver bangs slowly slicking to her forehead in the light rain. "You're running everywhere and it's confusing me. Stop for a minute and explain some things! Banora's been a Lifestream pit for _years_, there's nothing there that could'a summoned a Bahamut." Eil looked at her in a pleading way, water droplets making a steady _tok tok tok _sound on the lenses of his goggles as they stood in silence. "Please, Chyrin. I wanna help."

"Genesis Rhapsodos is in Banora. I'm sure of it. He and Weiss the Immaculate, the leader of Deepground, the ones behind Omega, and subsequently ShinRa's Dr. Hojo since what's left of him is sharing a body with Weiss, are behind that Bahamut. They've also kidnapped my mother for Minerva-knows-what reason, and Lindsey Komlin too." Chyrin bit her lip and looked at the ground, a growing sense of futility spreading in her chest. "I'm just one girl. I've given AVALANCHE no reason to trust me and I've got no spine to call my own, I can't beat these guys." She flinched as a warm hand landed on her cheek, tilting her face back up so she looked Eil in the eyes.

"Hey. You've got me on your side, that's got to count for something." He smiled, and she couldn't help but want to as well. Tears threatened to spill out of her eyes, but she bit them back and stared, unblinking, hoping that they would simply go away. "Now let's think about this rationally. They've got their combined power and the power of the most powerful White Mage in the world, so what's their objective?"

"A _monster's _objective is usually world domination or revenge." Chyrin spat the word _monster _like a derogatory term, her hands clenching into fists at her sides in her anger. "And while wings don't make you a monster, they definitely don't make Genesis-fucking-Rhapsodos an _angel_. Never mind Weiss and Hojo." Chyrin grabbed the hand on her cheek with one hand, and began dragging Eil towards the tent again. "So we're gonna stop them!"

"That's not AVALANCHE's tent." Eil said calmly, letting himself get drug along as though it was an inevitability. Knowing Chyrin Renton, it most certainly was. "That's the armory. Their tent is that small one over there." He pointed with his free hand, and Chyrin's eyes followed the gesture to land on a rather small tent with a patch on the roof that looked like it couldn't fit every single member of the former terrorist organization and a table. She blinked several times in confusion, but then immediately changed her destination.

There wasn't a single guard posted outside the flap of the tent, not even a 'Keep Out' sign hung anywhere. A few feet from the flap Chyrin let Eil's hand go and brushed her way inside on her own, leaving him to follow her at a slower pace. Inside the tent was much like the outside, patched and a little leaky-looking. There was a tupperware with a little water in it in the center of the small table, the remains of what looked like chicken curry floating in it. A drip fell into it in the silence that heralded the silver-haired girl's arrival, then another. The rain got a little heavier on the outside of the tent.

"That was a stupid stunt you pulled out there." Cloud finally said, his arms crossed on the table as he leaned onto it with the demeanor of someone that was just too plain tired. Chyrin nodded her agreement, and wedged herself between Nanaki and Cid at the edge of the table. "You could have killed all of us."

"First Law of Summons, they will not cause collateral damage unless uninstructed. I told the Knights of the Round to destroy Bahamut, and that's all it did. I may be impulsive and angrier than Heidegger on a bad day at times, but I can assure you that I know what I'm doing when hokey Planet magic stuff is involved." The teen wiggled her fingers in the air as she finished talking, garnering a few funny looks from the people around her.

"You also broke several major laws in the process, including Summoning Knights of the Round inside city limits." Reeve added, an eyebrow raising. Chyrin raised one back, then crossed her arms. Behind her, Eil stayed silent in an effort not to draw attention to himself.

"Genesis broke them first, I was just fighting Fire with Fire Three. A little overkill, yes, but that's the point I was trying to put across to him. Now, are we getting on an airship to Banora or am I going to have to do this the hard way?" The silver haired girl brushed some wet hair from her face before setting her hands on the table and leaning down.

"What would the hard way entail?" Vincent Valentine chimed in from where he stood by a corner tent pole with his arms crossed. He had an eyebrow raised, and from behind the silver-haired girl Eil was fixing the taller man with one of his own.

"Getting a few more party members, possibly Lareth Kingsley and Dr. Richard Kreshent, _commandeering _some form of transportation unless Lareth already has one in her vast arsenal of random crap she impulse-buys, heading to Banora and hoping the combined might of a medic with a large hammer, a packrat with a gunblade and two teenagers will be able to take down two nutcases and a _Goddess_." Raising her own silver eyebrow at the ones already raised at her, she huffed and continued. "I suppose you have a right to raise your eyebrows at me. The fact of the matter, however, still stands that two rather dangerous men have one of the world's best White Mages and my mother, and one of those men is obsessed with Minerva, who just so happens to probably have the power to destroy the Planet. We stop them, we save the Planet. That's what, the fourth time for you guys? I know it's getting boring by now but don't you have some sort of moral obligation?"

The silence between the teenagers and the assembled group of adventurers seemed to stretch on for what seemed like hours. The longer it stretched, the more uncomfortable it seemed to become. Eil coughed to relieve the tension, but it only seemed to make it a little more awkward than it already was.

"Who ever said we weren't going or that you weren't coming?" Tifa finally asked, a small smile playing at her lips. Chyrin's face broke out into a wide grin full of teeth, her brown eyes nearly disappearing in the smile. She didn't notice the _look_ Cloud was giving the woman, or the far worse one she returned to him. But then the girl's smile died down, and though laugh lines were still creased into the skin of her cheeks she looked deadly serious.

"If I'm going," she began, her voice a decidedly level tone, "then Eil is coming too."

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**HOLY CRAP, GUYS. CHAPTER TWENTY. I never thought I'd make it this far. In fact, when I started this I didn't have the slightest as to a plot and just started writing. But now look at it, more than a year later and twenty chapters of awesome. **

**After this story is done, though, I'm foraying into Transformers and probably never returning. The glorious awesomeness that is giant robots and their battles beckon. Of course I'm still playing Final Fantasy VII, and I might write a one-shot or two if the urge ever strikes me, but that's about the extent of my involvement in this fandom after this story is done, methinks. **

**I remember back in the first chapter I said that someday this story would be longer than Penance? I think I'll end up being right. There's no way this is ending in six chapters. **

**Lt. Commander Richie, out.  
**


	21. What I Fight For

**The Loveless**

_Lt. Commander Richie_

**Disclaimer: **Owning an airship, or an Autobot, or an Autobot that transforms into an airship, would be cool. Alas I have none of the above, though my dad drives a semi truck that I have suspicions about. Especially what with that big Autobot symbol on the side of it. In fact, if that semi isn't freaking Grimlock then I'll eat my hat. Thank Primus I don't own any hats.

_Chapter 21

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"You really didn't have to extend the invitation." Eil and Chyrin stood on the bridge of the _Shera_, Eil holding onto Chyrin's wrist with one hand. He looked a little green around the gills, so to speak, and with good reason. While Chyrin stood utterly enraptured with the view through the glass-bottomed part of the bridge, the blue-eyed blond with the sword on his back was trying very hard _not _to look down. Dr. Kreshent, who they had picked up just outside of Edge, had already given him a Tranquilizer but it hadn't had an effect.

"Of course I did. If I hadn't, who would save me from my own stupidity?" Chyrin shot the blond a light smirk as she spoke, watching as he gave up and simply screwed his eyes shut tightly and looked as though he was about to pass out.

"That Valentine guy would probably save you." The silver-haired girl laughed outright at that, resisting the urge to slap her friend- possibly _boyfriend_ -on the back for fear of making him spew chunks because of his airsickness. "He would and you know it."

"That's because he's not a heartless creature devoid of all emotion... Like some people seem to think he is." Eil spared the girl a glance coupled with a raised eyebrow, as if daring her to implicate him in the crime. "It's true!"

"Lemme guess, there are people that think he doesn't use inflections in his grammar either." Chyrin broke into a smile and clapped the blond on the shoulder in what she hoped was a comforting and assuring manner.

"You'd be surprised at the mass idiocy of the general populace!" She chirped, sounding happy as a clam. At the sudden jarring she gave the poor boy's frame, though, Eil suddenly held a hand to his mouth and ran towards one of the doors leading from the bridge.

"You puke _in_ or _on_ the ship an' yer cleanin' it!" Cid yelled after him from his position at the Captain's wheel, a cigarette clenched between his teeth. "And don' think we're gonna stop while ya do it, either!" Leaning against the wall behind the pilot, Dr. Kreshent cleared his throat and shifted his grip on his massive hammer. "An' you shut yer mouth! I didn't even hafta pick yeh up, but I did anyway! If th' kid can't keep from throwin' up on mah ship he kin damn well clean it up himself, n'matter what his self-appointed doctor says!"

"You two are bickering like old women!" Cloud yelled across the bridge from his seat near the wall of the glass dome that encased the wide-open glass floor. Cid made a rude gesture at him with his free hand, the other holding the ship on a steady course. Free of an airsick maybe-boyfriend for the moment, Chyrin ventured out further across the glass bottom of the bridge. Her face split into a grin as she watched the clouds zip by beneath her, and spun around with a jingle of her Silence charm and laughed.

"You both sound like a couple of angry teenage girls!" The silver-haired girl chimed into the fight, getting the attention of both the pilot and the swordsman. "Cloud I can understand, but _you_, Cid? Don't you have to keep your eye on the sky or something?" No sooner had she finished did a series of whacks sound across the bridge. Chyrin looked up in surprise, her breath hitching in her throat for a moment. Five birds, in a V pattern, were steadily sliding up the dome from the force of forward motion against them.

"Somethin' like that, yeah." The pilot muttered, and hit a couple buttons on the console beside him. "'Ey, Morris!" He yelled into a speaker, not waiting for the person on the other end, presumably Morris, to answer before continuing. "Git yer gear on an' scrape some birds off th' dome! They're leavin' smears an' I jus' had it cleaned!"

Not particularly willing to listen to witty AVALANCHE banter, Chyrin stopped her gazing down towards the ground and made her way towards the same door that Eil had excused himself out of just a little while before. She followed the sounds of retching down one hallway after the next, the clinking of her sword becoming louder and louder in empty metal hallways as the noise of even the engines died away. She looked back at one point, and realized that she was horribly, horribly lost. Chyrin sighed and put a hand to her forehead, resisting the urge to smack her face into one of the metal walls. She had missed the sound of Eil retching, probably, since there was no way he could have made it this far. But then who was throwing up?

"Hello?" The silver-haired girl pushed open a door at the end of the hallway she was in, only to get a surprise buffet of wind to the face. Somehow she had made her way down to the open observation deck at the bottom of the ship. She peered around carefully, then raised an eyebrow at what appeared to be Vincent Valentine holding Yuffie Kisaragi's headband in his gold-clawed hand and the center of her fuuma-shuriken in the other. Then it dawned on the girl- _that's _who was horking it up over the side of the ship. As if on cue, the ninja walked up to the older gunman and took her headband back.

"Dr. Kreshent could give you a Tranquilizer, you know." With a yelp the ninja spun around, her headband half-tied and flapping in her face. Chyrin walked out onto the wooden deck, smiling brightly. This was the kind of place she just wanted to stand and watch the world go by.

"I was about to suggest the same thing." Vincent chimed in, holding out the large throwing star so that the ninja could take it. Yuffie nodded once, still looking a little green around the gills, and took the weapon before heading for the hallway. Chyrin moved out of the way of the ninja princess, then closed the door behind her and went to the rail so as to look down at the rapidly-passing landscape.

Then it hit her: Vincent hadn't left. In fact, that was his gold-plated left hand now wrapping around the top guard rail of the platform. The silver-haired teen tried to stay still and nonchalant, and her mind was winning over the matter at hand. At least she had enough self-control not to say anything stupid.

"How many times will you have killed him, now?" Scratch that. Stupidity was now officially Chyrin's strong suit. Vincent looked over at the girl, conspicuously missing an eyebrow that was no doubt raised above the level of his bandanna. "Hojo, I mean. I only know of two times, but you never know with creepy bastards like that."

"This will be the third time I've had to kill him in some form." Vincent replied, and the two of them sat in a slightly awkward silence for a little while with the wind whipping through their hair. His bright red cloak made a snapping noise like a flag when the wind hit it just right, and Chyrin couldn't help but giggle after a little while of listening to it. "What did he do to you that you hate him so much?" Vincent finally asked, and Chyrin pushed herself away from where she was leaning on the rail and into an upright standing position. She thought for a moment, unsure about how to really proceed. She could tell him the truth and everything she knew about Jenova, and Sephiroth, and the Nibelheim Incident, and Zack and Cloud and even about Lucrecia and the undeserving former Turk right in front of her. One thing was for sure, though, her good mood was officially soured.

"He hasn't done a single thing to me. At least not directly, that's for sure. He was involved in Sephiroth, yeah, and Project G was all Hollander's fault, but it's all ShinRa to me." Vincent looked like he didn't believe a word she said, like that simply wasn't conviction enough. There wasn't a deep enough meaning to her hatred at all. And he was right, she realized, and she continued. "And," Chyrin paused, if only for effect and to figure out her wording, "because a long time ago, there was a Turk. And he did horrible things to that Turk, and it wasn't fair. Neither was what he put a small child through, or what he did to a man who was fighting for what he believed in, or to an infantryman with a lot of heart and potential." The silver-haired girl paused and put a hand to her face, only just then realizing that she was crying in the slightest way, and her tears were being blown away by the wind on the open deck. "He only leaves a trail of death and destruction wherever he goes. Quite frankly I think he would be better off dead. That he'll go down with Weiss the Immaculate and Genesis Rhapsodos? Well that's just a plus." With steel in her eyes the teen looked away, out at the thin air of the high atmosphere above the clouds that were whizzing by. Her entire demeanor oozed anger now, anger and a little bit of sorrow.

"You've got a big heart." His voice was closer than it had been before, but Chyrin didn't bother looking in his direction. "But you care too much about the people around you, and it's hurting you. It makes you angry." Suddenly Chyrin was enveloped in a pair of strong arms and the smell of gunpowder, leather, and the musty smell of old mouldering cloth. She blinked once, twice, three times in surprise, standing perfectly still and not returning what she now figured to be an attempt at a hug. "Don't mourn for me." His chin was digging into the top of her head, and at her little less than six feet that was saying something. But specifically, it was a little uncomfortable. "I do enough of that myself."

"At least you admit it." Chyrin said, but her words were carried away by the wind. There was no doubt in her mind that Vincent had heard them, though. She finally gave in and returned the hug, her arms wrapping around his chest and her face burying into the old red cloak. "Saves me the trouble of telling you." The hug lasted only a little bit longer before he pulled awkwardly away, adjusting crumpled bits and pieces of clothing back to the way they should be. The teen looked around awkwardly, and settled for sniffing her shoulder. It smelled kinda like old lady house. _Splendid_. "I won't tell anyone about this whole thing if you don't." Chyrin blurted out, trying to look impasse and absolutely failing. Every time she even so much as looked in Vincent's direction, now, she nearly giggled at his smelling like old lady house.

"Quite." There was the raised eyebrow again, and the silver-haired girl finally let out a titter of a giggle. Vincent nodded to her once, and then headed for the hallway door off the open deck. His cloak swept up to his side, snapping like a flag in a particularly nasty gust of wind that even knocked the lanky man forward a few steps. Chyrin finally laughed out loud, grinning and smiling as the ex-Turk wrenched the door open and went inside the ship. After a while she paused, turning back to the guard rail and leaning on it to watch the clouds go by.

"Well that was like a really horrible piece of romance fanfiction." She finally said out loud, giggling at her own realization. "I think I've actually written stuff that bad, too." The girl continued to muse, a small smile lighting up her features yet again. "I should get a computer when we get back to Edge."

-

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It was much warmer inside the _Shera _once Chyrin had been outside on the open deck for so long. Her skin was paler than it usually was, covered in goosebumps even though she rubbed at it angrily with her bare hands. With a huff the teen sat herself down on a convenient-looking box with several pipes making their way out of the bottom, more than likely a breaker box of some sort, in an area near the engine room. It had to be at least eighty degrees in the cargo space she had found, and she pulled her knees to her chest and itched at the ice that had formed in her hair after they had gone through that cloud. Stupid condensation.

The sound of something rolling and bouncing on the floor, a rhythmic _tok tok tok_ like it was made of a hard substance, filled the room. More of the sounds followed, like a series of things falling to the floor through a hole in the bottom of a box. More importantly, though, Chyrin knew that sound like the back of her hand. She heard it at least three times a week for the better part of a year. That was the unmistakable sound of Materia bouncing. With a moan of protest against what she knew must have already happened, the teen patted down her pants pockets with cold hands. They were completely empty, devoid of the seven Materia she had found in the wreckage of the WRO building. She groaned again, but with creaking cold joints she got up from her warm breaker box and stood on the metal floor of the cargo area. Chyrin's hand quickly darted out and snatched the Command Materia out of the air in the apex of its bounce, stuffing it in her pocket before going on to snatch up the BahamutZERO. She reached for the Life2, but it bounced from her hand and went rolling across the floor. She ran after it, trying to pull it up off the floor before she couldn't find it anymore.

"Come back here you little bugger!" She ordered, but the lifeless little sphere _surprisingly _didn't listen. With a lunge Chyrin grabbed the little sphere and slid to a stop on the metal floor, before stuffing it in a pocket and getting up. She couldn't hear the bouncing of Materia anymore, and with a resigned huff the silver-haired girl began her search for the remaining four Summons and Magics. She found the Quake stuck between two boxes, and the Phoenix under a work bench. By then she was feeling warmed up, and her arms were no longer covered in goosebumps and her hair wasn't standing on end. A glint of something shiny between two boxes caught her eye suddenly, and the teen made her way over and reached between the wooden slats. Something scraped her arm and she grunted at the stinging sensation, but wrapped her fingers around the object and pulled it out.

Oddly enough, it wasn't Materia. In fact, it wasn't even a magical item. A gold loop sat in her hands, holes for insetting Materia around the outside of it. There were only four, but they were in linked sets of two. With a grin Chyrin pulled four of what Materia she had found from her pocket and inset them. The Quake, Life2, BahamutZERO and Phoenix were all carefully secured before she opened the armlet up at its latch and fastened it around her upper right arm. Every time she touched the metal it got a little brighter, dust coming off from the friction. The latch clicked, and it stayed exactly where she put it. With a happy smile on her face, Chyrin jumped to her feet and looked back around the cargo space. She could just barely see a red glow in the opposite corner, and though she wondered just how it was that one of the Summons got over there she still made note of it. Still smiling she looked down at the crates she had just pried the Gold Armlet out from between, and raised an eyebrow at the peeling paint that spelled out _OBSOLETE ARMOR_.

In a split-second decision Chyrin hooked her fingers under the lid and pulled up, easily separating the top of the crate from the rest. The insides glinted like treasure, golds and silvers and bronzes reflecting the low running lights in the cargo area. With deft fingers the silver-haired girl reached in and plucked out another Gold Armlet, then closed the lid and tamped it down with a well-placed axe kick. She slotted her remaining Materia into it, the unassigned Command, and then went to find the remaining two. First she made a beeline for the red glow in the corner, jumping over boxes and sliding across the metal floor in her haste to get there before the dang thing rolled somewhere else. It was with relief that she finally reached down and snatched up the Knights of the Round, slotting it into the Gold Armlet with the Command.

"Figures the one I can't find is the one I never had the time to figure out what it was." Chyrin muttered, watching carefully in the semi-dark of the cargo area for a green glow. That last one had been a nice bright green, a good ol' dependable Magic Materia. She just didn't know what the heck it was. In a stroke of genius the teen clambered up on top of several boxes until her head nearly brushed the twelve-foot ceiling. Her eyes, muddy brown, pierced the gloom with a sharpness brought on by months upon months of looking for missing stock that had fallen from shelves or had been snatched by a shoplifter she couldn't catch. In the corner of her eye she thought she spotted something, a little green in a sea of brown wood, but without warning the entire ship shifted about twenty feet down and to the left. Boxes toppled and rocked, and with a screech Chyrin fell from her perch.

On the cold metal floor and groaning, Chyrin rolled over. Boxes were still shifting, sliding across the smooth cargo area floor since they weren't strapped down. One box had completely smashed, spilling old uniforms everywhere. As if taunting her, a little sphere of green rolled merrily across the teen's field of vision, maybe six inches from her nose. She growled and scrabbled to catch it, but it bounced out of her fingers as the ship jerked again. Scrambling to her feet Chyrin dove for it again, but it just barely managed a daring escape. With a cry of frustration the girl finally ran forward and stomped on the annoying little mastered Magic. It stopped short, wedged between the sole and heel of her old ShinRa SOLDIER boots. Giggling a little at her genius, Chyrin hopped on one foot and pulled the other up to unwedge the Materia from her shoe. It sparked a little at her bare touch, and she held it gingerly before securing it into the Gold Armlet. Finally, with it secured, she pressed her thumb to the exposed crystalline Mako and concentrated.

_Sweet spawn of Sephiroth_. It was a mastered Ultima. A nice big fat sparkly green death-causing rock. Just as she let out a triumphant "_Yes!_" the ship shifted again. This time it tilted, boxes sliding towards one wall due to the siren song of gravity. Chyrin dodged a large crate that was headed straight for her knees with a vengeance, and ran for the door. She grabbed the handle just as the ship tilted farther, and held on with both hands as her feet nearly left the ground. Behind her, crates smashed into piles of splinters and old clothes, old weapons and old armor as they collided in a pile on the opposite wall. The _Shera _suddenly righted and everything hit the ground, spilling across the floor like a washing machine opened prematurely. Without further goading Chyrin promptly threw the door open and ran for the bridge.

She finally got the Gold Armlet fastened around her opposite arm as she made her way onto the bridge. Panting from her run, the teen swiped unkempt silver hair from her eyes and looked out of the massive dome that should have been filled with bright sunlight.

"What the hell's going on, old man? I thought you could fly this thing!" She asked, whirling around to face a stony-faced Cid. His teeth were gritted and he was fighting the wheel, the remains of a cigarette long since bitten through still between his lips.

"I'm a lil' busy here kid!" He snapped, finally getting his weight under the wheel and turning it the way he wanted to. "Damn storm appeared right outta damn _nowhere_!" And an impressive storm it was. Roiling masses of clouds filled the bridge's many windows, dark and angry and swirling. Lightning crackled from one cloud to the next, making entire clouds light up in terrifying if not amazing displays.

"It's White Mage work." From the back wall, Dr. Kreshent spoke up. "I know this kind of storm anywhere. We're in the wrong hemisphere for something like this, and those cloud-to-cloud strikes are in a pattern. Lindsey conjured this." The redhead looked hurt, but the white-knuckled grip he had around the handle of his war hammer betrayed the no doubt limitless anger he was feeling towards the true perpetrator of the entire calamity. There was an audible gasp from the fore of the bridge, where Yuffie and Tifa were standing out on the glass floor. Chyrin whirled around once again, blowing fine silver hair out of her eyes so she could see better. What she saw stopped her in her tracks, her mouth slowly falling open at the sight before her.

The clouds were all swirling, downward in a massive spiral that looked as though it meant to swallow up the ship. The _Shera _was tiny compared to the size of the eye of the storm. In the center something was beginning, a glow that was becoming steadily brighter. The kind of glow that came from one thing and one thing only, the bright green of Mako. The Lifestream.

"Shit! I gotta land 'er, we ain't flyin' straight into that!" Cid pulled at the wheel again, this time in the opposite direction, and yanked at a lever on the console next to him. "Barret, c'mere an' lend me a hand!" The hulking mountain of a man ran to his teammate's aid, using both his human and metal hands to pull the wheel in the direction it needed to go. The nose of the _Shera _slowly began to tilt towards the ground, quickly gaining speed before beginning to drift in the direction of the massive gusts of wind that spun the clouds.

"Hold on to your respective asses!" Chyrin yelled, grabbing hold of something protruding from the wall that looked like a rail. The ship began to buck, and alarms began to blare with the kind of urgency that made you worry about your ability to stay in the air. A massive bolt of lightning crackled in the clouds, and then another shot up and connected with one of the propellers. The _Shera_ began to drop, puttering along at barely half-speed and falling quickly into the swirling mass of clouds. Cid swore loudly and shouted something into the intercom beside him, still struggling with the wheel. A particularly strong gust hit the side of the ship and the old pilot suddenly lost his grip on the wheel, a surprised Barret letting go as well. It caught him in the chin and he went stumbling backwards, the wheel spinning erratically between them as the _Shera _went into a spiraling fall.

Chyrin promptly sent a prayer to the Planet as she screamed at the top of her lungs.

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**If it's any consolation, I had this done yesterday but I was having too much fun immersing myself in Green Lantern comics to post. Quite frankly I actually FORGOT that I had finished this. So yeah, here you go. I hope you enjoy it as much as I snerked and snorted and giggled at it as I was writing it. **

**I don't have much else to say, besides that I finally have the rest of this planned out. Just not by chapter. So you might get a chapter with a plot point, a chapter with two plot points, a chapter with only fighting (oh god oh god I'm dreading that I can't write good fighting to save my life) and then some OHMAIGAWDEXPOSAY~  
**

**So later, comrades, though I doubt any of you are actually comrades. Review this like you've never reviewed before. **


	22. What Do Angels Dream Of?

**The Loveless**

_Lt. Commander Richie_

**Disclaimer: **Don't own it. I don't really want to, either. Because then people would be raging at me for the travesty that Kingdom Hearts has become. Stock might be nice though. But that's okay, really, because I already watch stock for Disney and Time Warner, and I don't need much else. OH! And the first time I ever really drew Chyrin despite having made her well over a year ago (nearly two since her original creation, holy crap) was like a week or two ago. Specifically when I got Dissidia, so of course it was AMANOHOLYCRAP!Chyrin, with scarves and beads and random bits of swirly armor and gravity-defying hair. maybe after I'm done coloring what I am right now I'll color that and show everyone.

_Chapter 22

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"_That_," Chyrin hissed, biting back curses as she picked her way through the debris and broken glass that had scattered everywhere around the bridge, "was _not _a landing! That was crashing, old man!" Cid made a rude gesture at her and went back to trying to at least salvage the overhead lights for the bridge.

"I'd like to see ya try one better!" He yelled around a fresh cigarette, and Chyrin stuck her tongue out at him and crushed a piece of glass beneath her heel.

"At least we're all alive?" Tifa suggested, a hopeful smile gracing her lips. Cloud and Vincent nodded in assent from where they sat, surveying the damage to the bridge. The glass floor and the dome had both been blown out by the force of the impromptu landing, and glass littered the metal parts of the floor and the dirt that had been forced up into the bridge because of the angle. With a sputter the overhead lights came on, coating everything in a yellow-orange glow. The shadows were deep, and the air was slowly getting colder as more and more rain began to fall. The sky was a dark and roiling angry mass of clouds ready to smite anyone that was foolish enough to venture out.

"No casualties, right?" Yuffie asked, trying to dig her fingers under a piece of metal that had landed on top of her fuuma-shuriken. She heaved at the weight, but it refused to budge. With an angry huff the ninja sat down on top of the chunk of what had once been the bridge and seemed to pout.

"Nobody's come runnin', so that's either real good or real bad." Cid remarked, shaking a finger as he zapped himself on a live wire. A metal beam that had once been part of the bridge dome fell from its precariously bent place and took out the last remaining window. The lights flickered again, and Barret kicked the breaker box. Immediately the lights cut out again, leaving the bridge in steadily-deepening darkness.

"They probably can't run because they're all _dead_,or fighting engine fires, or trapped, or any number of things. With all the lightning strikes and this ten-point landing the ship's gotta be on fire at least _somewhere_." Cid finally threw down the work he was trying to do and pulled the flashlight from his mouth, using it instead to make his way over to where Chyrin stood. Though trying to look intimidating, he simply couldn't pull the hulking look off. She was just as tall and just as broad-shouldered as he was.

"Listen, kid. I didn' have ta take you on this little excursion. You think my flyin's bad? How 'bout on the return trip we see just how well yeh kin fly without any goddamn wings!" The two sneered at each other, angry glares piercing through the darkness that cloaked absolutely everything else. Lightning crackled, and neither of them moved.

"Is everyone alright?" A pair of high-beams pierced the rain and the black, bobbing up and down as they jumped from place to place. They weren't particularly large, but the voice coming through speakers was easily recognizable. "Cid! I just had this thing detailed for you, and you crashed the poor girl?" As the bouncing lights came closer, the backwash illuminated the black and white fur of Cait Sith and the red mane of Nanaki.

"Don't go blamin' me!" The blond pilot yelled, looking about ready to bash someone with his flashlight. "Blame the flavor-of-the-week ShinRa-made nut that had us shot outta tha' sky!" He threw his hands in the air and stomped back to the controls, trying to get the lights back to working again.

"If Genesis did in fact have us brought down, that means he knows we're here." Nanaki held the burning end of his tail higher so as to cast more light, and Chyrin promptly situated herself beside the large cat and warmed her hands against the glow. "The storm has abated since we passed through it, so no doubt it was conjured simply to pull us out of the sky."

"So we get a party together and start lookin' for Banora? We couldn't have landed too far from the center of that storm, and the way it was glowing there's no way it wasn't a Lifestream pit." Yuffie suggested, a sour look still marring her features. Her feet rested on top of the one exposed spoke of her trapped throwing star, and every time her shoe tread began to slip on the slick metal she carefully caught herself.

"What about the crew?" Tifa asked, carefully setting herself down on what had once been a console. It wobbled a little bit under the foreign weight, but held steady. She looked tired, and as Cid once again managed to get the overhead lights running the yellow-orange glow made her look even worse. The lights barely lit the outside world, but it tinged the rain and the mist a lighter color that deepened the blackness.

"Yuffie's right." The ninja turned, a slightly confused look on her face, to look at Cloud. "They're Cid's crew for a reason. They can take care of themselves. Right now we need to focus on-" the blond was promptly cut off as a large red and silver knife blade protruded through the fallen piece of hull next to him. It sliced downward like a knife through butter, then withdrew and sliced several more times. The effect was that of a can opener, layer after layer of sheet metal being cut through with minimal rips and tears.

Chyrin's hand went to her sword, drawing it mostly from the sheath and pulling herself down into one of her practiced fighting stances. Cloud hefted the _First Tsurugi _and made ready to swing at whatever was attempting to gain entrance to the bridge. A black leather boot with a silver stiletto heel and a large pointed steel toe cap punched through the hull, sending bits of metal flying and revealing the blocked hallway off of the bridge. The barrel of a gunblade was thrust through the human-sized hole, followed by an arm clad in leather and fishnet and then a body. Pixie-cut black hair shone in the dim ceiling lights, and red eyes glowed like dim embers.

"Dammit Lareth." Chyrin put her sword away and slapped a hand to her face, looking down at the ruined deck with a feeling of exasperation permeating her mind. Cloud lowered his sword and adopted a slight look of confusion, which he turned on an equally-bemused Cid. "What the hell. Hoarding high-level Materia is one thing, but this isn't your problem." Chyrin ground out in a level tone, unwilling to watch as she realized just how angry Cid was probably getting at the idea of a stowaway.

"That's where you're wrong, kiddo!" The teen couldn't help but look up at the darkly-dressed woman, a fine silver eyebrow raising as though to convey how much of an idiot she was being. "I've been preparing for exactly this kind'a shit for _years_." Lareth paused and stuck the blade of her weapon into the deck, before turning back to the hole in the fallen hull section and leaning down out of sight. When she stood again she held Eil in a nearly effortless-looking fireman's carry for a moment before setting him back down. "Someone may wanna revive him. I only brought Mastered Summons."

"The hell are you doin' on my ship, woman?!" Cid's newly-replaced lit cigarette glowed angrily as he finally yelled, conveying the murderous intent the captain had towards the stowaway. Lareth shrugged, moving out of the way as Chyrin situated herself next to Eil and used Life2.

"The same thing you are, grandpa- saving the world." The pale woman smiled, a sharp canine gleaming with a nearly sinister glint in the low yellow lights. "I picked up on a pattern a while back about the seemingly natural disasters this world goes through. ShinRa-related mischief and giant rocks falling from the sky don't normally coincide, you know. So I figured that I'd stock up on things for the next time something like this happened and waited until the whole world started moving out to stop the disaster to make my move. I want in on the action, plain and simp-"

With a crack and a clink, Lareth Kingsley overbalanced on her vicious-looking stilettos and fell to the ground in a crumpled unconscious heap. Behind her stood Chyrin, who was sheathing her sword with a triumphantly annoyed look on her face.

"What?" The teen asked, leaning down as she finished to give Eil a hand off of the floor. "Woman wouldn't shut the hell up. Flat of my sword's too small to do much damage, but the end of the handle knocks someone out cold. Since it did damage the Silence charm worked, too, so she won't be doing much talking after she wakes up." Eil weaved on his feet but stood steady, and shook his head once or twice to get the white-blond hair out of his eyes. He looked around for a moment and then felt at his back, slightly confused.

"Have you seen my sword?" He asked groggily, blinking his bright blue eyes a few times. Chyrin whirled around, searching with her eyes, and she landed on what looked like the handle of his massive cleaver-like sword jutting out of the impromptu door that Lareth had made in the wall. She pointed and he nodded, making his way over and tugging it out from under a few scraps of fallen metal.

"So, this thing about going and kicking Genesis' ass and taking back the people he kidnapped all while adverting the destruction of the Planet by a Goddess... We going or what?" Chyrin asked, looking around hopefully at the assembled faces of AVALANCHE.

-

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Yuffie had mud in her boots. By all means this was not exactly a foreign concept, except for the part where she had yet to actually step in a mud puddle deep enough to get mud into her boots. But still it had leeched in somehow, creeping between her toes and no doubt staining her nice white stockings all sorts of shades of brown. So instead of verbalizing her torment, like she knew that she most definitely could, she simply grumbled and shifted her hold on her newly-recovered fuuma-shuriken. Beside her, a dark red cloud of darkness and muffin-shaped angst plodded along with nearly comical squelches filtering through the rain from his boots.

The procession was somber, except for her thoughts. Probably Chyrin's too, the ninja figured, but didn't dwell on that too hard since the girl was busy holding hands with her blue-eyed blond sword-toting adorableness and she most certainly was not jealous that a little teenager could get a boyfriend and she couldn't. Okay, so the girl wasn't little either, she was taller than and as broad-shouldered as Cid. But the notion still stood. And fuming about the silver-haired girl that could get a boyfriend when she couldn't was keeping her from thinking about the mud in her shoes.

_Squelch. Squelch. __**Squirk.**_

Never mind. The state her stockings were no doubt in was approaching a whole new level of grossness that simply could not be ignored. Too bad she couldn't _stop _or anything.

"Vincent?" Yuffie asked, her gaze not deterring from the muddy trail, and the bobbing light of Nanaki's tail, ahead. The man in question looked over at her slightly, just enough to catch her in the gaze of one red eye nearly covered with black fringe.

"Yes, Yuffie?" His tone wasn't exasperated or patronizing, just patient. The princess put on her best royal attitude, and puffed herself up with her shoulders back and her chin held up proudly.

"There's mud in my shoes, and it's freakin' gross. Carry me." From behind the two of them, the ninja could hear a snerking giggle that could only belong to Chyrin. The girl in question was biting her lower lip, a few snorts escaping as she tried not to laugh or squeal at the conversation happening in front of her. Beside her, Eil gave the silver-haired girl a funny look that seemed to pierce the darkness. Though the walk had been tiring, there was still an air of mirth about the group despite the overhanging sense of dread and finality. So it was the Final Boss, capital letters and all? No big deal, especially not in a group like AVALANCHE.

A steady seafoam green tint permeated the air. It was on the bushes, coloring the rocky ground, painting the trees various shades, and was even in the rain to an extent. Chyrin resolutely stomped into a puddle of light green, watching as it splattered all over the mud with sparkles flying into the air. The vegetation on the path steadily became thicker as the group walked, and it was to the amazement of a few that there were scraps and debris scattered every which way and nearly swallowed up by the lush forest. Everyone was silent, but not out of respect. With every squish and squelch of a step, they got closer and closer to their destination unchallenged, which was either very good or very bad. Genesis could very well have any number of spies or mutated creatures hidden in the surrounding foliage, waiting for the opportune moment to strike. A flash of blue out of the corner of Chyrin's eye had her reaching for her sword to fend off a Deepground grunt, but it was only a reflection off of a piece of ripped metal wall.

"You're getting paranoid." Eil said, after Chyrin jerked for her sword a third time. She made a face at him, but this time kept her hand on the hilt of her blade. "Nothing is coming. There's plenty of people in this group that can hear much better than you can if something is headed for us." With gentle fingers, he pried her grip off of the sword and let his hand substitute.

"It doesn't hurt to be prepared." Chyrin muttered through her pout, her lower lip jutting out defiantly. Eil chuckled, and the two continued walking through the increasingly more solid mud. Eventually it gave way to solid ground, but this was pockmarked with burnt foliage and smaller charred rocks. Wound all around those were new plants, everything becoming increasingly colored green by the Lifestream's exposed glow. As the trees began to thin, the glow became brighter and the rain began to let up. The damage to the ground became worse as well, whole chunks taken out of the ground down to the bedrock. In one particularly deep crater, no doubt caused by an off-course bomb, there was a puddle of Lifestream.

When it seemed like the damage couldn't get any worse, the whole path opened up. The trees were skeletal, wrapped in flowering bushes and vines but otherwise nothing more than pieces of charcoal. A purple, green, blue and pink-tinged sky could be seen straight upwards, ringed by a mass of angry dark clouds that occasionally flashed lightning from one formation to the next. As a whole, AVALANCHE didn't spend much time staring at the sky. No, their attention turned to the craggy pit below, glowing brightly and cheerfully despite the destruction that ringed it. Chyrin walked forward, pushing past Barret and Cid without a word, to stand at the edge of the destruction.

A hundred scenes and words ran through her mind, long-forgotten and pushed almost completely from recollection because of daily life she had been living. A pain crept into her mind, both old and deep yet fresh and sharp. She felt loss, though she certainly hadn't lost anything when ShinRa had dropped bombs on this small town. With a barely-concealed whimper, the silver-haired girl clutched at the white bow tied around her neck and bit her lower lip. So much for being strong, she figured idly, both trying to rid herself of the images she was remembering yet resigning herself to watching them play out.

_W_h_at the **hell** di_d_ you **do**, A_ng_eal?!_

_**S**_**O**_**L**_**D**_**I**_**E**_**R... **Do**e**sn't** mean **_**m**_**o**_**n**_**s**_**t**_**e**_**r**_**.** _

_But I _ne**v**er _**s**tol**e **from t_ha_t tree, **be**c**au**se th**e** rich ma**n's** so_nw_as my _**frie**_nd. _

D_o **yo**u **kn**o_w_ w_**ha**_t _**Du**_**m**_**b**_**app**l**es** a_r_e?_

_Yo**u'r**e _a_ li**tt**le mo**r**e i**mpo**_rt_**an**t t_**ha**_n **my** s**wo**rd. B**ut j**u_s_t _a_ lit**t**l_e_. _

"What do angels dream of?" Chyrin whispered, closing her eyes so as to clear them of the water that was building up. Tears rolled down her cheeks, leaving cold trails on her already wet face. She clenched her teeth and curled her lip, whirling around to face the group behind her. Cloud stood in her line of vision, having advanced while she was trying her damnedest not to cry. He blinked, a little surprised, at the look of sheer hated in the silver-haired girl's eyes. His defenses rose slowly, and his hand crept towards his sword. He had seen that look of hatred before, and he had seen it on one face. It was the look of malice Sephiroth had given to the people he had despised, and to the people he had believed to betray him.

"Vincent can have Weiss the Immaculate and Hojo. Everyone else can have Minerva. I'm going to kill Genesis Rhapsodos." Chyrin's hand went to her sword, and she pulled it from its sheath and spun it once. The blade flashed dangerously in the green glow of the Lifestream. "And I'm going to do it _slowly_."

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**So yeah! I have no idea what I'm going to do for the next chapter. But that's okay! I'll figure it out eventually!**

**I got a surprisingly depressing amount of reviews last chapter. :[ I expect at least twenty this time, guys! I know you can do it! I mean really, I get two hundred views of the chapter by the end of three days after I post it, so why did I only get like ten reviews?**

**In other news, do you guys remember Penance? I don't, and I wrote it. But it still gets like nearly 300 hits a month. WTF, man. ALSO! It has 226 reviews. Give this chapter twenty reviews and it'll be my most-reviewed story and I'll be happy. **

**Signing out, LCR.  
**


	23. Deepground Means Monster

**The Loveless**

_Lt. Commander Richie_

**Disclaimer: **No animals, monsters, Sweepers, Mandragoras, Tsviets or one-winged thingamabobbers were harmed in the making of this fiction. Too bad. Also, to answer the questions of one particular reviewer, no. There will not be a sequel. If you signed in I could reply directly to your reviews instead of calling you out in my Disclaimer/Author's Note. There will be no sequel because quite frankly it would get confusing as hell for me, as I can't even remember what I had for breakfast off the top of my head let alone what I wrote in a piece of fanfiction nearly a year ago. There is no underlying message in this piece of fiction. It's taken me too long to write for there to be one.

_Chapter 23

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"Chyrin, that sounds like a very distinctly _bad _plan." Eil was the first to speak up, pushing his way past a few people in the group to stand by Cloud just short of the silver-haired girl. She made a face, just a little more determined-looking than the one she already was, and reaffirmed the grip she had on the handle of her sword.

"I don't care. He took my mother and he's going to pay. Vincent gets his revenge, the rest of AVALANCHE gets to vanquish a _real _God for once and I get to carve a feathered sonuvvahbitch into a holiday dinner. Everyone's happy." Chyrin turned to look back out over the Lifestream pit, searching out the entrance to the old tunnels she remembered from playing Crisis Core so long ago.

"I'm not." From the back of the group the level voice of Richard Kreshent broke through, followed quickly by the man himself. His large war hammer was slung over his shoulder nonchalantly, almost as though he was taking a stroll instead of readying for a battle that may very well save the planet. "Genesis took Lindsey, and I'm going to get her back. You and me, we'll beat him down together."

"And I'm going with you!" Eil added, a hand coming forward as though he wanted to grasp at Chyrin's before he thought a little better of it and retracted the appendage. The silver-haired girl's expression faltered for just a moment, breaking its mask of horrible anger just long enough for a little confusion to show through. Almost as soon as it appeared it was gone, though the anger that resurfaced seemed as though it was tinged with a little hurt.

"We can't let you do this, just the three of you. You don't know what you're up against!" Tifa stepped forward, her fists clenched and an arm thrown out to the side for emphasis. "Chyrin, you've never fought someone like Genesis before. We have! If you're going to fight him then you can fight him, but you should at least know when to ask for help!" The white-knuckled grip Chyrin had on her sword's handle slacked just barely, her guard lowering as she mulled over the bartender's words. Her expression softened just a little, and this time it didn't harden into rage again.

"I-"

"Move!" Vincent cut the silver-haired girl off, knocking people aside as he tackled Tifa to the ground in time for a blue shot to sail through the space where her head had been. In a split second every last person in the group had drawn weapons, turning nearly in unison to face the vegetation behind them. Amidst the green leaves and the glow of the Lifestream as it seeped through the bomb-cratered ground, shadows flickered. The dying light shining through the eye of the storm above made each shadow deeper, giving each unknown assailant even more cover in which to hide. Vincent fired a warning shot just next to what appeared to be the head of one of the attackers, and as a group every shadow flickering seemed to freeze.

An ominous buzzing hum seemed to penetrate everything down to the bone as every shadow erupted with blue lines that criss-crossed in every direction and outlined more figures than those assembled would have thought possible. Snarling monsters with blades grafted to their skin snapped and growled at the small group at the edge of the cliff, some of the larger ones straining against leashes made of thick and heavy cable. A motley assortment of guns of every size, caliber and attachment bristled from every glowing grip, the cold metallic sounds of hammers being drawn back and pumps being yanked back making the hum of the blue electric lines seem even more ominous.

"Deepground." Chyrin and Vincent seemed to breathe the word at the same time, eyes searching through the flickering lights to seek out the small sigils on the breastplates of each visible grunt. But on every grunt there was only a deep scratch, sometimes more and sometimes less, where the small design used to be. The girl flinched as Eil threw his sword up in front of her face, a blue bolt from one of the grunts ricocheting off of the solid surface and into the sky.

"You wanna take us on? Take us on! Don't just stand there like a bunch'a wusses and take potshots at us from the shadows!" Yuffie made a gesture at the front lines of grunts that probably wasn't acceptable in polite company, making a face at them in the process. But despite the unprofessionalism she never left a battle-ready stance, her Conformer clutched tightly in one hand. "Or are you just too _Chocobo_ to take on AVALA-" the rest of the ninja's sentence was drowned out by a horrendous screech that rent the air like a knife through flesh. It sounded like it could tear souls apart and break glass, the kind of tortured scream that you only heard from the wild monsters of the Northern Continent. One of the grunts lost his grip on the thick cable leash he was holding and it whipped around, several more of the masked men being taken out as it continued its wild and free dance. The monster it was attached to, however, was not content with simply standing still. Another scream slashed through the minds of everyone present before it charged out into the open in a flurry of black criss-crossed with glowing blue.

A jagged beak was the first thing to descend, blocked just barely in time as Cid threw his Venus Gospel up and held it steady. The creature's mouth was wedged open by the spear stuck in its open beak, and rancid breath and chunks of an unidentifiable red substance were blown everywhere as the creature screamed angrily again. It reeled back and nearly took the pilot with it, but then pivoted and lashed out with a single clawed foot. One claw caught Cait Sith and threw the doll from Nanaki's back as he made a lunge for the monster's steady foot, nearly managing to sink his teeth into the hard and brittle skin before he had to jump away once again.

The assembled members of Deepground's infantry weren't about to let a good chance go to waste, and the rest of the larger monsters were quickly released and shots were fired into the fray. Eil's massive heavy sword was flung this way and that, bullets and energy ricocheting back into the assailants and felling a few. The harshness of the battle quickly escalated, horrible screams and screeches filling the air as shots went wild and managed to hit the larger flailing monsters. Chyrin flung herself into the fight with grim determination that she wasn't so sure she actually possessed, her grip on her sword white-knuckled and tight as she hacked and slashed her way through the faceless and nameless glowing blue and silver figures.

It wasn't too long before she found herself surrounded, guns and knives aimed directly at her from every angle as she slashed out angrily at her attackers. Slides cocked back in what seemed like slow motion, and as a knee-jerk reaction Chyrin threw a hand in the air and called on the power of the Mastered Ultima she had equipped in one of her Gold Armlets. The air around her arm seemed to glow before expanding into a twisting and beautiful display of runes and sigils, each confined to a series of spinning concentric circles that lit up in a brilliant and sparkling green that rocketed into the sky. Everything seemed to be suspended for a moment, and the silver-haired girl even began to wonder if it had worked as she hesitantly looked around at the stillness. Then, without warning, every sigil and every rune, every concentric circle and connecting line, exploded in a massive plume of bright and sparkling green magic.

Armor peeled from flesh and flesh from bone of every tortured creature, wild monster and infantryman in her radius of attack, the electric blue lines on their suits cracking and melting into tangled messes that grafted themselves to the empty skeletons. In an instant Chyrin was running for more opponents, anything to use as an outlet for her rage towards Genesis. She silently thanked one of the first rules of Materia, that Mastered Materia took no MP to cast, and hacked and slashed her way into the creatures that filled the underbrush. Screeches and screams were cut off abruptly as her sword cast Silence on everything she hit, horribly-disfigured monsters gaping and gasping as they tried to scream out and failed in confusion.

"Chryin, get out of there!" Someone screamed her name, but the teen refused to listen. She shouted wordlessly as she faced down a creature that might have at one point been human, but the four-legged posture and knives grafted to its forearms as well as the misplaced ligaments and jagged scars on visible skin made her wonder otherwise. Her sword was held in a guarding position as she circled with the monstrosity in one direction and then another. Without warning the creature leaped at her and connected with her stomach in a tackle, the double-bladed katana trapped between the two of them and biting into mottled monster flesh from the forward momentum. The two combatants tumbled backwards in a roll, crushing a burnt skeleton as they flew from the underbrush and back into the main fight. Somehow Chyrin managed to get a booted foot underneath the monster that was leaving scrapes and cuts all up her unprotected arms and snapping at her stomach with its jagged teeth, and she kicked up and over her head as she completed a backwards roll and scrambled to her feet. The monster lunged again and this time she slashed as hard as she could, two clean lines hemorrhaging bright blue Mako-infused blood as the creature stumbled back. Again it came at her, blue flecks of blood spattering Chyrin's arms and legs and mixing with her own blood that flowed from the cuts on her arms and torso.

A final slash dispatched the creature, and it collapsed at her feet with a final cry of indignation. In the dying light the teen girl flicked the blood from her sword and looked around, surveying the rapidly-dwindling amount of enemies left for her to take her anger out on. The orange light of the setting sun was suddenly blocked out over her head, and Chyrin spun around just in time to see one of the larger Deepground monsters headbutt her in the chest. With a cry she flew backwards, landing hard on her right shoulder and letting go of her sword. The Silence charm rattled on the rocky ground as it skittered away, kicked further and further from the silver-haired girl's grasping hands by the surrounding battle. The new monster screeched and flapped its wings before making a beeline for the fallen teen, fully intent on flattening her and probably dismembering what was left. Chyrin threw an arm up with full intent to cast Ultima again, but the creature didn't get more than three steps before a very calm and collected Vincent Valentine stepped between it and the fallen teen and fired once directly into its face. Bits and pieces blasted out of the back of the monster's skull along with quite a bit of bright blue Mako blood as the creature collapsed, sliding a few feet on the ground before coming to a stop.

"Find your sword, Chyrin." Vincent said, and Chyrin couldn't help but want to comply very badly because his tone of voice was not one to be contested. She scrambled to her feet and ran into the fray in the direction that her sword had gone, hissing angrily at the cuts she had received on her arms and torso. Just as she caught up to the weapon it was kicked away again, the one that did it standing his ground and leveling a gun at her with professional accuracy. With an angry scream Chyrin jumped forward, snapping her foot up at the last second and surprising the Deepground grunt as she kicked the gun from his hands and then planted her boot in the middle of his chest and sent him stumbling backwards. Without inflicting any more damage the teen ran past the grunt and towards the edge of the cliff overlooking the Lifestream pit that Banora had once been. What had once been sadness she shouldn't have felt at the sight was compounded into her anger, and her fingers closed tightly around her sword's hilt as she picked it up from the ground and spun around to face the fight.

Her righteous anger was interrupted, coldly and swiftly, by the butt end of a gun being slammed into her forehead by the grunt she had disarmed. Dazed and at a pause, the silver-haired girl took a step backwards to steady herself and planted a foot right into empty air. Chyrin didn't even scream until what felt like minutes later, as she watched the world slowly tilt backwards and turn from a battle into treetops and then into clouds painted the colors of sunset. Finally her eyes met the eye of the storm above and saw the stars beginning to emerge in the darkening sky, and she screamed. Gravity decided that she had had enough time to experience weightlessness and pulled with a vengeance and Chyrin promptly fell like a stone towards the unforgiving-looking ground below.

-

* * *

-

To his credit, Eil Allern did not scream when he saw Chyrin take the butt of a rifle to the forehead and then take a header off the cliff. He didn't scream when she did, though hers was certainly a fearful sound that nobody should ever have to hear. His heart was too busy skipping three beats and his mind was too busy trying to dissuade him from the urge to jump after her. The massive heavy sword he held in both hands seemed to gain a few pounds as he swung it, the blade nearly lopping the head clean off of a large feathered monstrosity that dared to get too close. Another creature came up behind it too quickly for Eil to swing his sword back around and he held up the hand he had put his Light Curtain ring on. The thing rebounded off of a Barrier spell, dazed, and inadvertently moved itself into the path of Richard Kreshent's madly-swinging hammer. The crunch of bones and blue electrical lines were heard as the war hammer made contact, throwing the monster into a group of its compatriots that were all subsequently fired upon by Barrett.

"What are you waiting for?!" Dr. Kreshent looked livid, ready to hit Eil with his hammer if he thought it might be necessary. "You've got an automatic Barrier item, go after her!" The redhead couldn't even finish his statement before Eil threw his sword onto his back in a surprisingly swift movement. In a few steps he had made it to the edge of the cliff and then kicked off after Chyrin, his momentum from the kick sending him hurtling towards the ground at an even faster rate than she was. A split second of falling was all he needed before he was reaching for the silver-haired girl's hand, fingers grasping as the lush green ground rushed up to meet them with a very forceful hello. Her fingers stretched out and just barely brushed his before he managed to take hold of her hand and pull her to him in a tight embrace.

They say that flying is simply the art of throwing yourself at the ground and missing. Flying clubs consist entirely of people that throw themselves at a grassy lawn while people they've paid to do so jump out of bushes in an attempt to distract them so that they miss the ground completely. However, when the ground is coming at you and all you can see besides a bright green glow is the leafy green death headed right for you, there isn't much that can distract you. Your mind becomes decidedly one-track, and that track is headed right for a broken bridge. But in the last second Eil clutched Chyrin tighter and twisted as best he could so that he was the one hitting the ground first. Not a moment too soon, the two of them hit the ground with a deafening bang and an audible crunch. Dirt flew everywhere as they were driven several feet into the ground from the force of the fall, sparkles of misted Lifestream and particles of plant matter dusting the air. As the two teens slowly relaxed out of their tense state of falling a few small avalanches of dirt fell from the walls of their small crater and dusted them with grime. From the soft brown earth an electric smell seemed to come, followed by small rivulets of the bright green liquid known as the Lifestream.

As a whole, the entire experience had taken no more than ten seconds.

"What the hell was that?" Chyrin seemed to find her voice rather quickly, using her free hand to make a fist and swing at Eil's head. He laughed and moved his head out of the way, letting her hit the soft dirt underneath him. "You could have died, you fucking dumbass! I ought'a kill you myself!" But in a moment tears were welling up in her eyes, and she buried her face into his chest and let go of her sword in order to wrap her arms around him as best she could. The small rivulets of Lifestream that flowed from the ground around them hissed as they came in contact with the blood on her arms, much like hydrogen peroxide when contacting blood on an open wound. Some of the larger cuts knitted themselves back together and formed knobby scars, giving the impression of self-mutilation all up and down her arms.

"We should get back up there." Eil commented after a moment, his blue gaze set on the edge of the cliff far above. As if on cue a man in a Deepground suit was thrown bodily over the edge as something very angry roared very loudly. He screamed as he plummeted, falling finally with a splash into the pit of Lifestream that had once been the small town of Banora. All that was left of him in a split second was a rush of sparkles into the air, ghostly green trails twisting and flying around each other as the bright liquid splashed upwards. Three more followed him, making identical noises and peppering the air with sparkling particles.

"I didn't hear a Summon command," Chyrin began, rolling over into the dirt next to Eil to look up at the rapidly darkening sky through the eye of the storm and the edge of the cliff far above. "So Vincent is probably going apeshit on what's left of the Deepground guys." Another angry roar, though it certainly wasn't very bestial, cut through the air. Lightning arced out from the cliff top and more grunts were thrown into open air to see if they could miss the ground. None of them did. It was an odd moment between the two of them, Chyrin absently rubbing at the red mark smack-dab in the middle of her forehead and Eil running his fingers through his bangs. After a minute the grunts simply stopped coming, the sparkles that were saturating the air finally given a chance to settle down and form glowing droplets on everything.

A final figure jumped off the cliff, though this time it seemed to be a controlled fall. The hammer held out to the side in one hand revealed that it was Dr. Kreshent, and at the last moment the man cast Barrier and landed in a crouch that sent shocks through the ground. Very carefully, the redhead stood up and looked down at the two teens that had yet to move from their own crater.

"You said something about finding Genesis Rhapsodos, Chyrin?" He asked, a grim yet pleasant smile gracing his admittedly rather good-looking features. The silver-haired girl made to get up, but stopped short as the ground shuddered around the three of them. Without warning the earth suddenly caved in, sparkles of Lifestream flying everywhere as the three fell into a dark pit. A few seconds of screaming and falling were all it took to get to the end of the gravity-induced excursion, and they were met not with hard rocks or stalagmites but with knee-deep water.

"What the hell was that?" Eil asked, pushing himself up and holding on to a rock formation in order to keep his legs beneath him. Dr. Kreshent looked about ready to echo the same sentiment, wringing water out of his hair with a sour expression. Chyrin sat in the water where she had fallen, the dirt that had been trapped beneath her now turned into mud that was seeping into her clothes. Her sword glistened just barely in the small amount of light present, and her brown eyes were wide as she took in the cavern around them.

"I know this place." She whispered, finally pushing to her feet and pulling her sword from the rocky ground. It was sheathed with a very audible click as she spun slowly around, peering carefully through the gloom at her surroundings. In a louder voice she spoke resolutely and in a clipped tone, her eyes tearing from the surroundings to fix on her two companions. "Genesis is down here. I know he is. You two are going to help me find him."

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**WOAH, AN UPDATE. WHAT IS LCR THINKING? **_To be quite honest with you I'm not. It's 12:30 in the morning, I have a convention in roughly forty days and I'm becoming increasingly distracted by Bleach of all things. That and Blackest Night in the DCU, but whatevs. _

_SO YEAH! You guys remember that thing called regular updates? Good, neither do I. But anyway, you probably won't get an update until after Sakuracon in the first weekend of April, unless I suddenly sit down and write another six-or-so page chapter picking up from this one because quite frankly I have ideas for Chyrin and Eil and Dr. Kreshent but I kinda wanna focus on AVALANCHE as well because lolVincentYuffie and I'm gonna have to kill Minerva and Weiss eventually. _

_Trust me on this one, with Eil you will not see it coming what so ever I swear it. With Genesis, I will do my best to write a bugfuck crazy mofo, but there are no guarantees. : I wanna write more Vincent/Chyrin interaction because it's really fun but I don't wanna seem like a total creeper so yeah. _

_If I spelled something wrong or someshit, don't tell me. I'll come across it eventually, swear myself blue a few times and then fix it faster than you can say 'antidisestablishmentarianism' twelve times fast. _

_Oh, and if you're in the Seattle area, go to Sakuracon. Try to find me. If you do... Well I dunno what I'll do but it'll probably involve running away because you tracked me down and I didn't tell you what costumes I would be wearing. Maybe not, though! You catch me in a particular costume and you might get candy. _

_LCR out before I embarrass myself further by continuing to type.  
_


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